


A Little Slice of Paradise

by Uratha



Category: Supernatural, Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Crossover, M/M, Post-Canon, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-31
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2019-10-01 06:39:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 44,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17239289
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Uratha/pseuds/Uratha
Summary: A sleepless night and an empty tank of gas will cause two men from two very different backgrounds to cross paths with surprising results and revelations.





	1. Cherry

Dean awoke with a start.  His tee was clinging to his skin, causing him to shiver involuntarily as the cold sweat caught the chill in the bunker.  _Just another nightmare._   That’s what he told himself, and for the most part, it was true.  It was also a welcome relief to be jerked away by a mundane nightmare, rather than be caught in the endless torture of riding piggyback to a dick archangel who’d hijacked his meat-suit.

Glancing over at his phone, he realized it was the middle of the night.  His stomach was grumbling, so he trod to the kitchen, barefoot and cursing the whole way because of it.  Rummaging through the pantry and fridge, he couldn’t find anything that sounded good, so he settled for a beer.  Taking a seat at the table, he looked for a case.  Something simple.  Not the grand post-Michael drama.  That was the usual apocalyptic-level stuff which was hardly Wham! Bam! Thank you, ma’am!  Or as the Winchesters had taken to calling it years ago… Tuesday.

He needed something to get his mind off things that he could handle alone.  Sammy and the others deserved to be able to sleep, even if he couldn’t.  An hour or so and three beers later, he’d run dry in both senses.  Walking back to his room, he sniffed.  Something smelled horrible.  After a heady whiff, he realized it was him.

Heading for the showers, it was nice to not to have to wait overlong for the water to heat up.  When it was just him and Sam there, it wasn’t a big deal, but the building was old.  That meant the plumbing was old.  The Men of Letters were scholars and occultists, not teamsters.  Their choice of hot water heaters was lacking, at least by modern standards.

Wrapping the towel around his waist, he used the palm of his hand to wipe the condensation from the mirror.  He stared at the reflection that he found there.  It was a face he scarcely recognized.  Lines of worry and bags under the eyes from exhaustion?  Sure.  He’d had those there for more than half his life now.  It was the beard.  It was his weak attempt at protest—quiet rebellion to distinguish himself as Dean, rather than Michael, who preferred his vessel clean-shaven.

The problem?  Dean hated the damned thing.  It made his face itch like crazy, and given his less than four-star eating habits, crumbs and what not inevitably lingered.  Despite the old jokes of saving something for later, even as crude as he was, the notion of plucking food detritus out of his facial hair and shoving it into his mouth was just too gross to entertain.

Besides, there were precious few people in this world that he genuinely thought looked better with a beard than without.  Bobby was sort of middle of the road in that regard, but his brother?  Sam went from looking like a lumbering sasquatch to an even bigger freak… like Gossamer from the old Looney Tunes cartoons.  Dean had bitched enough that Sam had relented and gotten rid of his beard.  It was only fair that he did the same, so he grabbed the razor and did exactly that.

 

The night air was downright cold against his freshly-shorn face.  It still, however, felt good to both look and feel like himself again.  He wasn’t quite free of the specter of Michael, but the act of defiance was like a baby step in that direction.

He kept the window down as he drove.  The roar of the Impala’s engine couldn’t be heard over the music blaring from the cassette player at first, but uncharacteristically, Dean shut off the radio just a few miles down the highway.  Though he wasn’t exactly flying down the road, the wind whipping past his ears still served as white noise while he watched the headlights stretch out before him.

He had no real destination in mind, and he told Sam as much in the note he left for him.  He wasn’t avoiding his brother, so kept his phone handy in case he called.  He just needed to stretch his legs, both mentally and figuratively, so he picked a direction and just started driving.

Since it was still dark, he was a bit surprised when the gas light came on.  Surprised, at least, until he realized he was two hours from where he started.  Seeing the familiar sign of a Gas-N-Sip, he pulled off and was relieved to see that it was a twenty-four-hour location.  He was downright ecstatic when he saw a twenty-four-hour diner just a few blocks away to boot.

The place was off the beaten path but still close enough that it had a decent following among the overnight contingent.  Well-lit and not empty, it didn’t set off any warning bells in Dean’s mind.  Pulling into a parking spot close to the front, he walked inside to be greeted by the friendly voice of an attractive waitress refreshing the coffee of the likely driver of the semi he saw outside.  “Have a seat wherever you like, hon.  I’ll be right with you.”

Dean grabbed a seat in a well-worn but clean booth and grabbed a menu from behind the napkin dispenser.  He glanced at the cover.  The place was called “Jimbo’s”, but there was no address listed on the vinyl pages.  He idly wondered if he was still in Kansas, but he wasn’t interested enough in the answer to use his cell to look.

When the waitress made it over to him, she was all smiles.  “Hey, there.  What can I get you?” she asked him.  Glancing at the name tag, he could see her name was Ashley.  It suited her.  Mid-to-late twenties, hair that skirted the border between dirty blonde and light brown, and blue eyes not quite so world-weary as to be jaded.  Still, though, she moved with the practiced ease of someone intimately familiar with the food service industry.

“Coffee, for starters,” he smiled, contemplating flirting but deciding better of it.  “What do you recommend?”

She stared at him in appraisal for a moment, and Dean was instantly glad he’d maintained a professional boundary.  She had that look like she was ready to shoot him down if he’d tried it and happily surprised that he hadn’t.  “Well, it depends on whether you’re in the mood for an early breakfast or a late dinner.” She motioned over her shoulder towards the kitchen, which, given the size of the place, wasn’t all that far from where he was sitting.  “He makes a mean burger, but I’m pretty partial to his omelets myself.”

He glanced in that direction to see a guy that looked more like a bouncer than a line cook.  It wasn’t that he was _that_ big.  In fact, he was probably just a hair shorter than Dean himself. He was more heavily-muscled, but not overly so.  As a hunter, Dean had long ago learned to size both people and situations up in an instant.  Something in the way the guy carried himself made him a bit wary, like someone he would not want to face in a fight.

The ease with which the cook moved was one born of necessity.  He didn’t make grand motions.  Every inch precise and necessary—no more and no less.  He was a fighter… or a hunter.  Realizing he was staring and hadn’t given Ashley his order, he offered her an apologetic glance.  “Bacon double with fries?”

“Sure thing,” she chirped pleasantly, scribbling it on the old-fashioned pad.  When she withdrew her hand, Dean saw the faded lines of a band on her ring finger.  Lots of waitresses took off their rings to make more tips, whether they actively flirted or not.  This was different.  This was someone recently divorced, or at least separated.  He guessed three or four months.  Made sense.  Her skin was far too shiny for someone that slung java all the time… unless she was doing something about it, intentional or otherwise.  When he saw a glimpse of white powder on her skirt, the pieces fell into place.

Baby oil and powder.  A new mom who was protecting her skin second-hand, because she rubbed the oil on her infant regularly.  The powder?  She probably changed a diaper right before she left the house.  She didn’t realize she’d gotten it on her.  When she tried to cover it under Dean’s scrutiny, he felt bad that he’d inadvertently embarrassed the young woman.  “Didn’t mean to stare,” he told her truthfully.  “Sort of missed that stage with my own.   Guess I was wishing I could get those years back.”

His words set her at ease, as they were meant to.  They were also true, at least in part.  He was a father three times over, in a sense.  First with Ben, even if he and Lisa no longer remembered him.  Then there was Emma, but that hardly counted, particularly after Sam put a bullet in the Amazon.  Finally, there was Jack.  Sure, the Nephilim was Lucifer’s by blood, but Castiel and both Winchesters had been the only father figures he’d had since birth.  “How old is yours?” she asked, genuinely interested.

“Grown now,” Dean told her, deliberately dodging the answer.  He avoided doing the math about Ben, still half-convinced Lisa lied to him about the boy’s paternity.  As for Emma and Jack?  Well, ages were… _complicated_.  Giving her his patented grin, he deflected.  “I’m older than I look.”

Pouring him a cup of coffee, she stood there with the pot in hand for just a moment before she responded.  “Well, then.  You look good for your age.”

And there it was.  She would go home with him if he wanted, but as much as the thought of spending a night with something other than his nightmares appealed to him, he wasn’t about to do that to this single mom.  Her awkward reluctance before the compliment-slash-come-on suggested she hadn’t been out on a date since her husband skipped out on her.  He didn’t need to complicate her life with his drama.  She had enough of her own.

“And you look wide awake for a girl with one so small,” he countered, keeping the topics in the safe zone.

For her part, Ashley seemed content with their exchange.  She nodded, “My folks keep him when I work.  Right now, it’s easy enough.  He sleeps the night through.  Not sure what I’ll do when he gets older.  I thought I’d be back in school during daylight hours now, not still serving up the same hash I’ve been slinging since I was in high school.  Didn’t really plan on Ronnie pulling up stakes and bailing.”

“Order up!” the cook called, and Ashley seemed embarrassed at what she’d just shared.  She excused herself hastily, and Dean mentally kicked himself.  He’d opened a can of worms.  That much was clear.  The poor girl was so rattled, the plate slipped from her grasp.  Impossibly, its contents remained in place as the cook caught the dish and righted it before it spilled onto the floor.

Dean was now certain the man was a fighter or hunter or something.  His reflexes were too good.  That’s when Dean’s stares shifted from Ashley to the other man, which was probably just as well.  Sporting a near-constant blush, she seemed to be avoiding his table anyway.  As cook and waitress went back to their routines, Dean watched steady hands guide a knife along a cut of meat without hesitation.  Those hands confused him, because he didn’t see the callouses or burns or scars that he expected to find.

The guy must have felt someone watching him, because he looked up.  There was nothing friendly in his glare.  In fact, it was almost a scowl.  Still, Dean could tell the guy was handsome.  Though the hazel eyes felt like they were boring into his skull, the hunter had to admit that there were clearly chiseled features beneath that neatly-trimmed beard—a beard that Dean thought looked pretty good, though the guy would probably look better without it. He likely wouldn't have noticed if his own weren't lying discarded in a sink a hundred-plus miles away.

Ashley placed his order before him, and he took that opportunity to defuse the situation.  “Listen, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable.  Just small talk, which I’m bad at,” he partially lied.  Honest-to-Chuck small talk he hated.  Flirting to get what he wanted was a useful skill he’d practically mastered by the time he had finished puberty.

His attempts at placating her were well-received, and the red in her cheeks was finally gone.  “No, you were fine.  That was my ineptitude.  I overshared, which is not something I typically do.  I typically keep to myself, but for whatever reason, I felt comfortable enough to tell you things I don’t talk about often.  Too comfortable.”

“Feel free,” Dean told her.  “We all need someone to talk to, and it doesn’t look like Jimbo back there is Mr. Conversationalist.”

Realizing he meant the line cook, Ashley put her hand over her mouth and laughed.  “Him?  Oh, that’s not Jimbo.” She slid into the booth across from Dean.  “Mr. Phillips—that was Jimbo—he died about six months back.  Heart attack while he was back there cooking.  Poor Mrs. Lucy was right beside him when it happened.”

Dean wasn’t expecting the narrative, but he listened, nonetheless.  Realizing he’d been caught off-guard by the tale—one she was clearly more comfortable telling him than her own—he shook himself from his reverie long enough to say something, even something as lame as “That sounds horrible.”

Ashley shrugged.  “In a way, I guess, but he was calm, right up until the last.  He knew he was dying, but he said he wasn’t feeling any pain.  Cam,” she began, thumbing in the cook’s direction, “He was a customer in the diner that day.  He held Mr. Phillips’ hand until he took his last breath.  He tried to do CPR after Jimbo lost consciousness even, but it was no use. He was gone.”

“Anyway,” she continued, “Mrs. Lucy was crying that she’d lost her husband, and now she was going to lose the diner and her life savings.  I convinced her to close the place until after the funeral, and then I’d help her figure out what to do.  When we opened, Cam was there.  He said he’d fill in until she found a new cook.  She tried for the first few weeks, but we’re kind of in the middle of nowhere.  She eventually stopped looking, and Cam hasn’t said anything about leaving.  If he does decide to, I don’t know what will happen.”

Dean looked at Cam, trying to reconcile the hard-ass exterior with the kindness that Ashley had just described.  At first, there was a disconnect, but the longer he looked, he could see that the guy had walls around him.  That was something Dean knew about first-hand.  “Nice guy, huh?”

“The nicest,” Ashley affirmed.  “When Ronnie came up here and demanded my wedding ring so that he could give it to my now former best friend, he grabbed me and threw me into the counter.  Cam beat the living shit out of him.  He told him if he ever laid a hand on any woman again, much less me, he would rip his throat out with his teeth.”

Dean chuckled at that.  Original, to say the least.  He was about to say something, but the waitress excused herself.  She had a couple of checks to settle, so he began to eat.  While he watched her at the register, he spied something incredible: half of one of the best-looking cherry pies he’d ever seen.  When she rejoined him, all thoughts turned to the new object of his affection.  “Is that pie half as good as it looks?”

“Better,” she smiled.  “Can I interest you in a slice?”

“You absolutely can.  The burger is incredible.  Did he make that, too?”

Ashley shook her head.  “Mrs. Lucy can’t cook our usual fare, but she can bake like nobody’s business.  She comes in every morning, like clockwork, to bake up a few pies for the day.  That’s our claim to fame, if I’m being honest, though Cam’s handiness on the grill is building us quite a following as well.”

Finishing his burger, his pie, his coffee, and his second piece of pie—in that order—Dean was utterly relaxed.  He no longer remembered being plagued by memories of Michael or anything else.  He was completely full and utterly content.  When Mrs. Lucy came in, Dean complimented her on what were truly two of the best slices he’d ever had.  The widow responded to his innocent charm and packaged him up two more for the road on the house.  “You’re going to make me too big to fit behind the wheel,” he told her.

“Nonsense,” she assured him.  “I need to clear out the case anyway.  If you come back tomorrow, I’ll have something different.  Haven’t quite decided what I’m making yet.  I always let the mood strike me.”

Ashley smiled, watching the exchange.  “We’ve got some bananas in back that will go bad soon,” she suggested.

Mrs. Lucy considered it.  “I haven’t made a banana cream pie in a while.  Do you like banana cream?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Dean replied quickly and wholeheartedly.

“Banana cream it is,” the elderly woman said as she scurried off towards the kitchen.  “I’ll make sure Ashley puts you back a piece.  You come on back tonight.”

“I will,” the hunter assured her before he even realized it.  He wasn’t really planning on it, but if he had another sleepless night—highly likely, given his sleep pattern of late—he wasn’t above making another drive.  Fishing the cash from his pocket, he paid for the meal, insisting on paying for the two extra slices of pie while he was at it.  He left a twenty on the table for Ashley, and as he started out the door, he turned to say something to her.  Instead, he found Cam staring at him.  His words escaped him, so he just left.

When he got back to the bunker, Sam was up.  “Good.  You’re back.  I think I may have found something.”

Dean handed him one of the pieces of pie.  “It’ll have to wait.  I haven’t slept much tonight, but now, I have a full stomach.  I’m going to take a power-nap, and then you can tell me all about it.”

The younger Winchester shrugged and nodded.  His focus returned to the computer before him as Dean started down the hall.  When Sam took a bite, he called out, “This pie is amazing.”

“I know.  It’s why I brought you a piece,” Dean smirked without looking behind him.  “ _A_ piece.  If you or anyone else touches the other one, there _will_ be Hell to pay.” When he made it to his room, he plopped down on the bed, uncomfortable as it would be to anyone else, and he laced his fingers behind his head.  Closing his eyes, he drifted off to sleep thinking about the pie, Jimbo’s, Ashley, ... and Cam.


	2. Banana Cream

When the nightmares came, Dean was hardly surprised.  What _was_ a surprise?  He didn’t really mind.  But then again, it was no surprise at all.  Even without looking at the clock, he knew it was the middle of the night once more.  Dropping his feet to the side of his bunk, he felt the cold floor beneath him.  Grabbing a fresh change of clothes, he made his way to the shower and got cleaned up, contemplating taking a little extra time to enjoy the warm spray of water on his achy joints.  Ultimately, he decided against it, and he had a pretty good idea why.

He could barely remember what had plagued his dreaming thoughts, but he vividly remembered what had filled his waking consciousness.  That third slice of pie very nearly started a fight in the bunker, but Dean managed to get most of it.  He wanted more.  Specifically, he wanted to make good on his promise to go back to Jimbo’s for that piece of banana cream.  If that meant another chance to see the pleasant Ashley, the sweet-as-her-pies Mrs. Lucy, and even the mysterious Cam, he was good with that as well.

Driving had always been kind of cathartic for both Winchesters, but for Dean, especially, it was a release—an outlet for the things he couldn’t say and couldn’t do… or the things he _did_ say… the things he _did_ do.  For this reason, unless he had a pressing engagement of the life-or-death variety, he seldom got in any hurry.  It also went a long way to avoid the unnecessary entanglements that traffic stops for speeding entailed.  So why, then, was he tapping the wheel so impatiently?  Why were these two hours so much longer than the ones just a night ago?

 

He pulled into the spot adjacent to the one that the Impala had previously occupied.  A semi sat in the same spot, but both cab and trailer belonged to a different company and driver.  The chime once again announced his entrance, and just as before, he was greeted by, “Have a seat wherever you like, hon.  I’ll be right with you.”

When Ashley glanced up and saw him, she smiled.  Once she’d finished with the table she was speaking with, she grabbed the coffee pot and made her way over to him.  She lifted it as if to ask a question, but it was no question at all.  He nodded, and she set the mug before him, filling it to the top, not bothering to ask if he needed any cream or sugar.  She clearly remembered that he hadn’t used it during his last visit.  “Well, look who it is,” she grinned.  “You going to make this a habit?”

“Mrs. Lucy make a fresh pie every day?” he asked, genuinely curious as to the elderly woman’s routine.

“Seven days a week,” Ashley confirmed.  “She says it’s her way of contributing to the diner.  Besides, if we went a day without one of her desserts, we might have a riot on our hands.”

Dean could certainly understand why.  “You said desserts.  She makes stuff other than pies?”

The waitress nodded.  “She makes at least one pie every day, but cookies, cakes, you name it.”

“All of it delicious?” he raised an eyebrow.

“Each one good enough to smack your mama,” she chuckled.

He laughed despite himself.  The expression was common enough in the South, but the words conjured that image in his head.  “I’ll take your word for it.  Pretty sure even trying that would end with both my butt and my arm in a sling.”

Ashley giggled.  “Speaking of cookies, she’s a tough one, huh?’

“The toughest,” Dean affirmed proudly.

She didn’t both taking the pad from her apron.  “So, anything beyond the coffee and pie?”

 Looking over her shoulder, he saw that Cam was once again behind the grill.  As incredible as the pies were, Dean had to admit that the burger was one of the best ones he’d had in years, maybe ever.  “You still recommend the omelets?”

“Absolutely,” she beamed.  “What kind you want?”

He hadn’t bothered to grab a menu, so he simply shrugged.  “Surprise me,” he told her.  He saw Cam glaring at him again—same scowl—and he felt something in him rise to a challenge.  He wasn’t sure whether the other man had designs on Ashley, but as Dean did not, he found the whole thing funny.  “Actually, tell him to surprise me.”

The guy’s brows furrowed so much that they almost became one.  Dean was expecting some expletive or challenge, and instantly he regretted it.  He remembered what Ashley said about what Cam had done and continued to do for Mrs. Lucy and the diner.  If it was to be a choice between Dean and Cam, it was no choice at all.  Dean would be out of here, _sans_ pie, and he would not be welcome back.  He could hardly blame them… he was being a dick.

Luckily, Ashley didn’t pick up on the unbridled—not to mention completely unnecessary—display of machismo.  Cam clearly did, but the guy said nothing.  Dean reminded himself that the guy could probably beat his ass, or at least make getting beatdown not worth the one he would receive in return.  Cam could also spit in his food, or worse, if he were so inclined.  The view to the kitchen was wide open but watching it every moment would be difficult.

“You got it,” the young woman told him, placing a hand on his shoulder.  He knew what that was.  Simple contact, innocent and innocuous.  It was an in, a first step at more… an opening salvo to _wanting_ more.  Something within Dean stirred, but forcing his blood up and his instincts down, he turned his attentions away from her to grab some napkins from the dispenser as though he were prepping for his meal.

She pulled away with a speed just shy of recoiling, and Dean cursed himself again.  She’d done exactly what he wanted her to do, so why did trying to be a good guy make him feel like such a dick.  “Thanks, Ashley,” he told her gently to soften the blow.  The reward for his efforts was a soft smile, so he counted that as either a partial victory.

Glancing up at Cam, Dean studied the man and tried to gauge his reaction.  Would shooting her down be appreciated?  Would hurting her feelings just antagonize him more?  The cook was inscrutable, the same scowl fixed both on his face and in Dean’s general direction.  Ashley walked over to give Cam his order, but he was already working on it.  Dean knew it was his, because everyone else in the place had full—or at least half-full—plates in front of them.

Dean didn’t think the diner was so small that Cam had heard what he’d said.  Then again, maybe his mouth was that big.  Certainly, that was a very real possibility.  When the burly cook grabbed an onion and a bell pepper, Dean could hear Sam’s voice laughing in his head.  After his unprovoked and unnecessary attempts at assholery, a veggie omelet would be the least he deserved.  Resigned in that fate, he felt Cam’s own stare of appraisal.  _Yep_ , Dean thought, _he’s waiting for a chance to do something bad to that omelet._

Instead, though, the man pushed the vegetables away and grabbed a large slab of ham.  Carving off thick slices, he diced it coarsely before tossing some bacon and sausage on the griddle.  Once those were cooked, Cam cut them both into smaller pieces before going for the cheeses.  That was _cheeses_ … plural.  He freshly shredded or cut hearty samples of not just cheddar and swiss but Gruyere and Fontina as well.  Silently, Dean hated himself for even knowing the last two, but while Maggie—one of the Apocalypse World survivors—was recovering from a Grace-enhanced djinn’s attacks, the girl had streamed episodes of Food Network virtually nonstop.  Dean might have seen one or two… or more.

While Ashley was with another table, Cam set the plate on the passthrough.  Dean was expecting him to call order up, but he didn’t.  Realizing that Ashley was still otherwise occupied, the man walked out of the kitchen and put the untampered—and amazing-looking and -smelling—dish on his table.  Dean was expecting a thanks for letting Ashley down or a warning to stay away from her, but once again, Cam said nothing.  Now that Dean thought about it, if hadn’t heard the man say, “Order up”, he wouldn’t even know what he sounded like.  Deep voice, but strangely pleasant.  Not as gravelly as his own, but just as laden with the potential for menace.

 

Ashley was semi-ignoring him, but as the night progressed, Dean realized that was likely more to do with the diner’s busyness than an actual cold shoulder.  He watched her move back and forth nonstop, and the way she was shifting on her feet, he could tell that her shoes were killing her.  Glancing down at the sneakers, their leather was well-worn, and the rubber tread beneath was essentially gone.  What remained undoubtedly left blisters on her soles, and Dean once again felt like a heel.  Single mother struggling to make ends meet.  Hardly a new story, but it hit him just the same.

As his eyes followed her, he heard the nigh-mute speak.  “You want anything else?” Cam almost growled.

“Just pie,” Dean forced himself to smile innocently.  Ashley looked up as though she were about to head towards him, but Cam just shook his head.  The cook came out from behind the kitchen once more, taking a momentary break from the endless stream of tickets he’d been filling.  Reaching into the case, Cam took a piece of pie out and slid it off the server onto the plate.

Dean could hear his stomach growling—feel it gnawing at him—when Cam closed the case.  How his appetite could betray him so, demanding to be further sated after practically inhaling the undoubtedly best omelet he’d ever sampled?  Dean had no idea.  He almost screamed in exaltation when the cook stopped a half-step from the case, only to open it again and add a second slice.  When he walked over to Dean, he placed the plate in front of him. Moving to the serving stand, Cam grabbed a fresh set of silverware and brought it to him wordlessly.

As the man turned and stepped away, Dean couldn’t help himself.  He just couldn’t resist.  “Thanks,” he said, trying to elicit a reaction out of the guy.  When Cam stopped and looked over his shoulder, Dean thought that he had poked the bear.  Instead, all that came was a “You’re welcome”.  _So, the mute_ can _speak_ , he mused to himself.

As the night dragged on into the early morning, Dean soon found himself to be the only customer left in the place.  Cam was cleaning the grill, and Ashley was doing calf raises while she wrapped more silverware, no doubt trying to work out the kinks and aches her shoes were inflicting upon her.  When she saw Dean watching her, she just stared at him for a moment.  He was certain she was getting a stalker vibe from him, so he quickly cast his eyes down to the dwindling cup of coffee he held between both hands.

Ashley grabbed the pot and came over to the table.  Refilling his mug, she set the nearly empty glass container on the table adjacent to them.  She slid into the booth across from him.  “You’re a bit of a mystery,” she told him, a curious look on his face.  “The muscle car outside isn’t exactly an eighteen-wheeler, and you’re not native.  Trust me, I know everyone in this one-horse town and have since we were all in diapers.  You’ve come in two nights in a row, and you’re in no hurry to leave.  Not that I’m complaining, since you tipped well, but what’s your deal?”

 _Busted_ , he thought… but then he thought better of it.  This wasn’t the usual set-up.  It wasn’t a con—a cover he needed to maintain to get a job done.  Time for a different tact.  Time for the truth.  “If I’m being honest?” Dean began.  “Couldn’t sleep last night and took a drive to clear my head.  Had to stop and fill up and saw the sign, and I came in for a bite.  I came back for the pie.”

He said it with a smile, and it was essentially true.  The cherry pie was, the more he thought about it, the best he’d ever had.  The thought of banana cream nagged at him most of the day, and expectation met reality.  Far from disappointing, he would have never thought it possible, and yet the banana cream was better than the cherry.  On some level, he had wondered if Mrs. Lucy was a witch, like some Hansel and Gretel type.  As he hadn’t been kidnapped, shoved in an oven, or tried to kill anyone, he thought coming out here a second night was worth the risk.

Out of the corner of his eye, Dean could have sworn that Cam had his ear turned towards them, as though he were listening for his answer.  That was impossible, though.  Between the running water and clanking of pots and pans and dishes in the kitchen, there was no way anyone could hear what was being said in the front of the house.  And yet?  It felt like Cam was somehow _satisfied_ with Dean’s reply and went back to what he was doing without even looking in their direction.

“Okay,” Ashley commented, and it jerked Dean’s attention back towards her.  He hadn’t realized his focus had shifted so fully towards the cook until that very moment.  He almost blushed, somehow embarrassed, but for what?  He wasn’t entirely certain.  “So, you can’t sleep, and you have at least one kid.  Let’s start with something simple.  How about a name?”

He grinned.  The young woman—who he had to try to ignore was likely little more than half his age—seemed less flirtatious than before.  She was obviously interested… trying to figure out the “mystery”.  He didn’t see the harm in satisfying her curiosity to some extent.  “Dean,” he told her simply, opting to withhold the rest.  Yet for whatever reason, he gave up more than was asked.  “Three kids, sort of.  The first one wasn’t mine, apparently.  I loved him and truly thought I could be that Norman Rockwell kind of husband and father, but it didn’t work out.  Probably for the best that they got some distance from me.  She’s married now. They’re happy in a way that my life doesn’t have a tendency of being.”

Ashley was taken aback by his frankness.  He was as well.  “I’m so sorry,” she offered.  He could tell she wanted to ask, but she was afraid of crossing some unseen barrier of propriety.  He wasn’t overly comfortable sharing these feelings, but he’d pulled the bandage off.  It wasn’t her fault if some wounds were still fresh.

“Thanks,” he said, and he meant it.  “Second one was a girl.  She was unexpected to say the least, and whereas Ben was like a mini-me, Emma was just like Lydia.  Way too much.  Both mom and daughter died pretty suddenly.”

There was an unexpected crash of something in the kitchen, and if Dean didn’t know better, he could have sworn something he said struck a chord with Cam—a familiar situation or name, Dean couldn’t hazard a guess as to which.  Again, though, Dean dismissed it as reading into something that wasn’t there.  “Are you okay?” Ashley called out loudly.

“Fine,” Cam called back, matching her volume and then some but in keeping with his usual brevity.

Dean was grateful for the interruption, though.  It distracted Ashley from offering condolences that he thought were better left unsaid, given circumstance.  “Number three is a good kid, though I guess kid isn’t completely accurate.  He’s practically your age, if not a little older,” he told her, choosing his words deliberately.  “You’d like him.”

And there it was.  In that instant, Ashley was no longer even considering him as a bed partner at all.  Dean had turned into that old guy trying to pair her up with his son.  He almost laughed at the absurdity of it all, but as she was still vested in the conversation, he continued.  “Everyone likes him.  Even me, and at first, I pretty much wanted him dead.”

When the waitress shifted unfortunately, he couldn’t resist smiling.  “It was his dad.  His father is a dick… king of the dicks… like the _original_ dick.  I can’t even call the guy the worst human being ever, because he’s so far removed from being human, you wouldn’t believe it.”

“I know the type,” Ashley smirked.

“No,” Dean shook his head solemnly.  “You really don’t, and I pray you never do.  Thankfully, Jack turned out to be more like his mother than that dick-bag.  She died when he was born, and me, my brother, and a friend of ours have been basically playing surrogate parent since.  Funny.  We’ve taught him life skills to get by, but he’s taught all of us far more life lessons.  Seeing this world through innocent eyes gives you a fresh perspective.”

The young woman nodded.  “It definitely does.  Mine’s not that big, by any means, but I can already tell what you’re talking about.”

Dean shifted a bit, more exposed than he typically let himself become.  She could obviously sense his discomfort and shifted as well—the topic at hand.  “Your brother?  Tell me about him.”

“Sammy?” he smiled reflexively.  “Little brother.  I’ve been looking out for him my whole life.  For the longest time, it was my job.  Our parents separated when we were children, and without Mom in the picture, our Dad kind of went off the rails.  Not a bad father, but more preoccupied with other things than being a Dad, at least in the traditional sense.”

“That must have sucked,” Ashley frowned.

Dean chuckled.  “A lot more than I realized at the time.  It worked out in the end, to some degree, at least.  Me and Sam made our peace with our upbringing.  We lost our Dad several years ago, but we got Mom back.  She wasn’t the same woman we thought she was, but not in a bad way.  It was that perspective thing again—the vantage point of little kids versus grown men.”

The girl’s face looked just at that tipping point of her sympathy bring her to tears of her own.  “I thought I’d had it rough,” she told him.  “You’ve lost so much.”

He shrugged.  “Something of a family tradition.  Still, we continue the family business.  Both sides, come to find out.  We always thought we were stuck re-enacting our Dad’s life.  As it turns out, it was Mom’s life before that.  Both picked up different stuff—good and bad—from their folks.  Dad lost his Dad at a young age, thinking he’d skipped out.  Instead, Henry died a hero.  The place we live in now?  We got that from him.  Her Dad wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but he had his redeeming moments, too.”

“What about your grandmothers?” she asked, instantly regretting it.  “Sorry.  Just thinking about my own grandma.  Lost her right after the baby came, and I miss her so much.”

He waved it off.  “It’s fine.  Really.  We didn’t know Dad’s mother, and we barely knew Mom’s.  I met her briefly, though Sam never did.  Deanna was a sweet lady.  Guess that’s why Mom named me for her.  I got the better end of that deal.  Sam was named for Mom’s Dad.  I wish I’d gotten to know her better, but I never got the chance.  I remember she was a good cook, though.”

Ashley put her hand over her mouth in surprise.  “Oh, my.  When you said, ‘sweet lady’, I thought about Mrs. Lucy.  I had no idea of the time.  I need to finish getting things ready for the day crew.”

“Not a problem,” he assured her.  “I need to get home anyway.” As she rushed to complete whatever tasks lingered, his eyes drifted to Cam again.  Dean could swear the guy had listened to every word, but between the dishwasher, garbage disposal, and half a dozen other appliances, there was simply no way.  Still, Dean felt somehow naked when the cook looked up at him momentarily.  For the first time, there was no scowl.  There was no smile, but it was progress… however unintentional.  Dean decided he would take it—and found himself wondering why he even cared.

Dean was just settling his tab, leaving enough on the table to cover his meal and leaving two twenties for Ashley, when Mrs. Lucy walked in with a brown paper sack.  The old grocery bag was far from fresh, creased with repeated use.  “Good morning,” she smiled as he hastened to prop the door open for her.  Setting her load down, she gently placed a hand on the side of his face.  “Such a good boy.  Thank you.  I don’t know what this old lady did in a past life to deserve two handsome young men around her, but I wish I could go back and do it again and again.”

As Cam and he were the only guys in the place, Dean blushed, knowing she meant the two of them.  He looked up to see if the other man had heard her.  Instead, he found that Cam had disappeared into the back storeroom.  “Well, you pay him,” he teased.  “I do it out of the goodness of my stomach.  Your pies are amazing.”

She smiled at that, motioning for him to follow her to the bakery case.  She opened it to scoop out two more slices of the banana cream, tucking them into a to-go container.  “Actually, I don’t,” the elderly woman said, and seeing the confusion on his face, she semi-clarified.  “Not exactly, anyway.”

“I don’t understand,” he admitted.

“I don’t pay him,” she expounded.  “I mean, I give him money… cash, like he asks.”

Warning bells went off for Dean.  The guy was on the lam.  Cash meant no paper trail.  No social security number, driver’s license, or social security number required.  Instantly, his posture shifted to aggressive.  He wanted to protect this sweet old lady.  Mrs. Lucy noticed the change in his stance.  “It’s not like that,” she told him.  “Not at all.  Without Cam, this place would be gone.  I know that, and even though he doesn’t say it, so does he.”

Dean’s confusion only grew.  Pretty boy in the kitchen might sling a mean burger and an even better omelet, but it felt like he was a predator, playing on Mrs. Lucy’s trust, grief, and need.  Mrs. Lucy shook her head.  “Susie and Glenn are great—that’s them that just walked in, by the way.  Husband and wife, years of experience, but it’s Cam’s cooking and Ashley’s personality that pay the bills.  Our business quadrupled at night.  We’re in the black, solidly, for the first time in more than a decade.”

While the man’s talents were undeniable, she was doing nothing to alleviate his concerns.  She could tell that as well, if her continued elaboration meant anything.  “I told him I could afford to pay him—fairly well, all things considered—thanks to him.  He refused, but I told him I wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“Okay…?” Dean muttered quizzically.

 “There’s an old coffee can in the kitchen, and every week, when I pay him, he puts the cash in there, only to replace it on the shelf—out of sight and out of reach,” she began, and Dean almost hated that the woman was so trusting and forthcoming with information she shouldn’t be sharing.  “Susie and Glenn know it’s there.  They’ve been with me since the start, so I don’t worry about them bothering it.  Besides, they know what it’s for… I’ve told them.”

Dean’s eyebrow raised, dying to know the explanation, which was thankfully still coming.  “It’s for Ashley.  Cam said every dime I would pay him, he wanted in cash to put in that can for the day when she needs it, either for herself or for the baby.  Glenn and Susie even add a little.  I’m just not allowed to tell her about it until he’s gone, which I hope is a long time from now.”

“Why would he do that?” the indignant con artist in him asked.

“Trying to help a young single mother out?” Mrs. Lucy guessed.

Dean shook his head.  “I mean.  How does he pay his own bills?”

“He said his family died years ago and left him well off—enough that he doesn’t need the money.”

Viewing the man’s odd behavior as something of a case to be worked, Dean’s questions continued.  “You say that like you didn’t know his family.  Were they not regulars?  I mean, if he came here enough to offer to fill in after your husband….” His voice trailed off.  He felt like he was beingly grossly insensitive to the woman’s loss.  After all, Ashley had been the one to tell him what happened, though it was Mrs. Lucy’s tale to tell.

The widow didn’t seem to mind.  “That was the first time he’d ever set foot in the place,” she smiled.  “He pulled off the highway to fill up at the Gas-N-Sip and saw the sign.”

Okay, Dean didn’t know whether to be more suspicious at that or less.  The similarities in their arrival here were uncanny.  Divine providence and chance were just two names for random coincidence, which the hunter no longer believed in.  Still though, he couldn’t find a plausible reason for an ulterior motive.  “Wow,” he managed.  “He just up and moved here?  Sorry, I didn’t mean to sound….”

She all but cackled.  “You mean why in the Hell did he pull up stakes and set up shop here in the middle of nowhere? I get it, and I’m not offended.  In answer to your question, though, yes, he did.  He was staying at the motel down the road until I found out about it.  He’d been paying for a room there for over a month when I did!  I made him move into my spare room, and after another month of arguing, I finally got him to agree.  He’s the best roommate I ever had—no offense, Jimmy,” she smiled, casting her eyes towards the heavens.  “He’s tidy.  He keeps the house cleaner than he keeps the kitchen, which is really saying something.  And he’s quiet.  He’ll sit in the living room with me for hours to keep an old lady company, but beyond that, he’s content to just read in silence.”

His eyes drifted towards the kitchen, but the night cook was gone by now.  Glenn was there now, and Dean stared vacantly in that direction.  As he tried to piece together everything he knew about Cam—practically nothing—he was left with more questions than answers.  Who was this guy?

“On the house,” Mrs. Lucy smiled, handing him the pie slices she’d packaged up for him.  “That bag over there?  It’s full of some of my neighbor’s tree poop.”

The strange words snapped Dean out of it.  He could only stare at her blankly, finally grinning when she withdrew something from its contents.  “Please tell me you don’t have a nut allergy.”

“No, ma’am,” he assured her, already imagining the taste.

 

As he drove home, however, Dean’s mind lingered not on food—for a change—but the guy who was preparing it (other than the pies).  Cam was pretty much the only thing that occupied his thoughts, even when he made it back to the bunker.  Sam was scouring one of the Men of Letters tomes.  He glanced up at the elder Winchester’s entrance.  Hardly surprising that he was so wide awake, as Dean had stayed at Jimbo’s longer than the morning before.  “Where you been?”

“Getting pie,” Dean said simply, putting the slices on the table next to his brother rather than taking them to the kitchen.  He absently ignored the taller man without realizing it.  “Another long night with little sleep.  I’m going to grab some shut-eye before we tackle whatever you’re researching.  I don’t even want to know until I get a nap and a shower.”

Sam nodded dismissively, turning his attention back to the book.  “Smells like banana cream.  If it’s half as good as the cherry, I might have a fight on my hands keeping everyone away from it.  I may need to hide it to keep it safe for you.”

“Whatever,” Dean told him, starting down the hall.  “One of the others can have it.  I’m saving room for the pecan.” And just like that, he had already resolved himself to going back to Jimbo’s once he was positive Glenn and Susie would be once again replaced by Cam and Ashley.  Idly, he worried that he didn’t know when the pair took a day off.  Then he worried about _why_ he was worried.  Pushing it aside, he drifted off to sleep.  He didn’t think about food once while he did.


	3. Pecan

Dean awoke the next night to another nightmare.  _And in other news,_ he thought wryly to himself, _water is wet_.  For the third night in a row, the silence of the bunker greeted him.  Honestly?  He almost welcomed it in a way.  It gave him time to himself—not to think, but to _not_ think.  Between the uncomfortable familiarity of his haunted thoughts and the comfortable familiarity of a hot cup of coffee and a full stomach, he was able to block things out more easily than he had been when he’d finally found release from Michael’s grasp the second time.  With time, he thought he might eventually be able to truly rest, finding that disturbed equilibrium that both Winchesters maintained after a lifetime of hard choices and loss.

Another hot shower and close shave made him feel a bit more like himself, and leaving a note for his brother, he headed to the garage and down the highway soon after.  He wasn’t completely disconnected, like the first night, but nor was he anxious, like the second.  When he reached Jimbo’s, he received a slightly different greeting from either night.  “Hey, Dean,” Ashley smiled at his entrance, “just have a seat, hon.  I’ll be right with you.”

Looking towards the kitchen, he saw the familiar sight of Cam back there.  The man met his gaze for a few seconds before looking down at whatever meal he was preparing.  Again, no smile, but again, no scowl.  For some indiscernible reason, that made Dean himself smile.

Glancing over his shoulder to where the Impala rested, he noticed the sign on the door.  Funnily, he hadn’t really registered it before now.  It said “24/7”.  Dean could only assume that there was more staff he had yet to meet (not that he’d _met_ Glenn and Susie).  When Ashley brought to him a steaming helping of what he still maintained was the elixir of the gods, second only to beer, he realized just how much of a creature of habit he had become in some forty-eight hours.  And like any good—nay, exceptional—waitstaff, the young woman had already committed his pattern to memory.  Then again, a handsome face, some sparkling and less-than-sparkling conversation, and sixty bucks in tips went a long way towards that end.

“You haven’t touched the menu,” she noted with a grin.  “So, either you know what you want, or you want a recommendation.”

He softly chuckled at that.  “Am I really that predictable?”

She shrugged.  “Maybe less predictable and more reliable?”

“I’ll take reliable,” he told her a smile.  “Got any suggestions on what I should try?”

“Not really,” she replied.  “I haven’t had anything Cam made that wasn’t good.”

He nodded.  “Well, then, tell Cam to surprise me.”

She lightly touched his shoulder.  It was different than before.  Nothing to the gesture beyond friendly and welcoming.  He’d been friend-zoned.  That was, in fact, what he wanted, as he didn’t want to pour the heaping pile of shit that was his existence onto her already hard life.  It didn’t mean there wasn’t a sting in acknowledging it.  It went from a mild sting to a scorching burn when he considered that he might not have been friend-zoned as much as Dad-zoned.  Yeah… that was it.  As a young man, Dean never considered he’d even reach forty, much less be treated as such—even if it came as a result of his own admission.  He might not look the part, but his weary body certainly felt it most days.

“Omakase, Cam,” Ashley told the cook, who simply nodded.

Literally, in Japanese the word meant _I’ll leave it up to you_.  It was a fancy way of saying “chef’s choice” that was found predominantly in sushi restaurants.  Dean was more than a little bothered that he knew that.  Food Network strikes again.  He found it interesting that Cam and Ashley’s rapport included such a unique diner shorthand after just a few months.  Somehow, though, he wasn’t surprised that Cam knew the word.  Mrs. Lucy’s comments about how the man preferred to read in silence made Dean think there was a brain under all that brawn.

Dean half-watched Cam start to prepare something while Ashley stood idly by, enjoying a rare respite from the constant back and forth movement.  All the patrons were currently content, enjoying their food, aside from Dean himself.  “You ever get a day off?” he asked her.  Under normal circumstances, such a question hinted at a proposal, some innuendo or invitation to spend it with him.  He didn’t mean it that way with her, and she took the innocent question exactly as intended—another pointed reminder of the dynamic that he’d had more than a hand in creating.

“I’m normally off tonight, actually,” she told him.  “Wednesdays and Sundays I’m usually not here.  The folks go to church, so no babysitter.  The transmission went out on my car, though, and I can’t really afford not to work every chance I get.  Luckily, Ramona said she’d help me out.”

He raised an eyebrow.  “Ramona?”

“Yeah.  She used to be a regular waitress here.  She still picks up shifts occasionally.  We started here together.  Went to high school together.  Grew up together.  Best friends since preschool.  Basically, my sister from another mister,” she laughed.  “You know the drill.”

Dean chuckled.  “Yeah.  It’s good to have friends like that,” he agreed.  “How come she doesn’t still work here?”

“She’s taking classes over at the college.  She just works here around her school schedule,” Ashley explained.  “Basically, having the life we were supposed to have together before I met Ronnie and made the biggest mistake of my life.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love being a mother.  It’s all the drama that came along with his father since.  Ramona warned me not to get involved with him, and I was too stupid to listen.”

“She had him pegged, huh?”

She nodded.  “You’d think I would have listened, since she pretty much knows him better than anyone.  I mean, she did share a womb with the guy.”

Dean raised his eyebrow once again.  “Twins?”

“Yup, but Ramona harbors no misconceptions about her brother.  She thinks—or rather, _knows_ —he’s the biggest dick in town.”

“That’s good, at least,” he told her.  “So, you’re here seven days a week right now?”

She nodded.  “Until I finish paying back Hank over at the garage for the labor and parts, it’s gonna be me and Cam.  Luckily, he—Hank, that is—isn’t putting the screws to me for his money.  I give him twenty bucks, a hundred, or none.  There are some advantages to small-town life.  Not enough to make it worth it, but it is what it is.”

“Everybody seems stretched pretty thin,” Dean noted.

Ashley shrugged.  “It’s not so bad.  We all do what we can to help Mrs. Lucy.  A day off would be nice, but none of us is willing to leave her in the lurch like that.  You probably didn’t notice, since you had no reason to, but there’s a ‘Help Wanted’ sign in the window.  It’s actually been there since before Mr. Phillips died.”

She was right.  He hadn’t noticed, which was a little surprising.  He had no dog in the fight, but he tended to be more observant than that.  “Random question,” he began.

“Random answer,” she replied mirthfully, making him smile.

He shook his head in amusement and asked.  “You call Mrs. Lucy, well, _Mrs. Lucy_.  How come Mr. Phillips is ‘Mr. Phillips’ and not Jimbo?”

It was a fair question.  It deserved a fair answer… she just didn’t happen to have one.  “Truthfully?  I have no idea.  It was his nickname, she said, but I never heard anyone call him that, not even when I was a little girl.  Even Mrs. Lucy called him Jimmy.”

Dean nodded.  Taking a sip of his coffee, his thoughts drifted to what she’d said earlier.  “So, Cam works every day?” he queried, not entirely certain _why_ that occupied his thoughts suddenly.  Knowing what Mrs. Lucy told him, he had a follow-up question, though he suspected the answer.  “You’ve got a transmission to pay for.  Why’s he working seven shifts a week?”

 “Fourteen,” Ashley corrected him.  “He works a double, if you can even call it that, every day.  He comes in, relieves Glenn about two or three in the afternoon, and he’s here until we leave about six or seven in the morning.  Never once complains.  I don’t know how he does it.  As to the why?  To help, I guess.  He drives a nice SUV, and I’ve never seen him spend a dime since he moved out of the motel.  Brent’s folks run the place—I went to high school with him, too—they said they hated to see him leave.  He paid for six months in advance, and when he cleared out, he didn’t ask for it back.”

 _What the hell was this guy’s deal?_ Dean wondered.  As he turned his eyes towards the man in question, the hunter could only eye him curiously.  Cam didn’t look up.  Instead, the cook was still preparing Dean’s food, which was beginning to concern him… not because of the growing enigma he was becoming, but because the guy was doing something with wild rice.  Instantly, he started to grow apprehensive, worried that something that could marginally be called healthy would be coming his way.  Mentally, he shrugged.  He hadn’t been steered wrong with the omelet, so he had to have faith that what he would soon be eating would fit his palate as it had on the previous two nights, rather than some rabbit food crap more suited to his brother’s dietary habits.

Realizing he was staring, he looked back to Ashley just in time to see her looking over his shoulder.  “Duty calls,” she smiled, motioning towards some of the tables that wanted to settle their checks.  In short order, he was soon the only patron in the place.  It certainly wouldn’t stay that way if the last two nights were any indication, but the solitude was strangely relaxing.  It was an easy silence as the young woman started wrapping silverware for the next shift, and it wasn’t interrupted by Cam letting her know that Dean’s order was up.  Instead, the cook came out from the kitchen and walked it over to him.  A delicious-smelling mound of fried chicken was seated on a golden-brown waffle that Dean realized had been made with the wild rice earlier, explaining the extra time and care taken.  Cam correctly assumed that Dean would be in no hurry to leave.  Clearly, Ashley wasn’t the only one paying attention to the customers.

Why did Dean like that attention?  He couldn’t ponder it long, as he was stupefied to hear Cam speak.  “There’s some hot sauce over on the counter if you want it,” he said.  _Holy shit.  An actual sentence._ Dean barely urged his brain towards a coherent response before the man moved fully away from his table.

“What do you recommend?” Dean asked.  “ _Omakase_ , right?”

Cam raised an eyebrow at him in scrutiny.  Now Dean knew how everyone else felt when he was the giver, rather than the recipient.  Finally, Cam answered, but not surprisingly, it was expressive only in actions rather than words.  He removed the maple syrup—the real kind, not the usual grocery store variety, Dean noted.  He set it on the counter next to the hot sauce and reached behind the counter to grab a jar of honey.  He put it down next to the plate then grabbed the coffee pot and refreshed Dean’s cup.

“Going to take the trash out to the dumpster,” Cam told Ashley as he disappeared into the back.

She simply nodded, counting the tip she was pocketing and gathering up dishes left behind by the last customers.  Taking them to the kitchen, she started washing them, leaving Dean to his food.  He wasn’t about to insult Cam by not following his silent recommendation, but he couldn’t put his finger on why it mattered.

Drizzling the honey lightly over the chicken and waffle, he was rewarded for his trust.  The chicken was moist and juicy with a crispy skin with just the right amount of seasoning.  The waffle was similarly crisp but flaky enough to be easily cut with only a fork.  The honey managed to bring out both sweet and savory notes of each, and Dean honestly had some impure thoughts about the sensations running from his stomach to the rest of his body.

When the jingle of the bell signaled the arrival of another customer, Dean contemplated calling out to Ashley so that she could hear over the noises behind the sink.  As it turned out, the newcomer had other ideas.  “Hey, bitch!” the guy shouted.  Dean knew the familiar slur of a drunk well.

Ashley turned off the water and walked out front.  The hunter noted that she was staying behind the counter and came out from the far end, keeping as far away from the stranger who was no stranger at all.  “What are you doing back here?”

The guy snorted in derision.  “Do you know how embarrassing it was for Walt to come serve me some papers while I’m playing pool at the bar with my FRIENDS?” he shouted.  “Do you honestly believe I’m going to pay you a dime of child support?”

Now, it was Dean’s turn to snort in derision.  The guy turned to glare at him.  “You got a problem?  Something you want to say?”

Dean set his fork and knife down, but Ashley quickly cut him off.  “It’s okay, Dean.  I’ll handle this,” she smiled at him, though her face was laced with a combination of fear and uncertainty.  “Ronnie, he’s your son!”

The guy laughed.  “And I’m supposed to believe that?  You think I don’t know how every guy in town wants you?  Have since high school.  You probably spread your legs for half of them—if not all of them.  The little bastard doesn’t even look like me.”

“Okay, pal, that’s enough,” Dean said, standing up.

“Oh, yeah, _Dean_?” Ronnie asked, stretching out the name he’d heard Ashley mention for emphasis.  “Are you fucking her too?”

The hunter didn’t hesitate.  He moved directly towards the girl’s ex until they were little more than a breath apart.  “I’m going to give you one chance to apologize to the lady before they have to wire your big mouth shut.”

Ashley rushed over and placed a palm on Dean’s arm.  “Don’t.  He’s not worth it,” she said defiantly, trying to pull him away.  It was a momentary lapse in his focus, but it was enough.  A half-turn provided an opening, and Ronnie’s fist connected with his eye socket before he even registered it was happening.  It rung his bell enough that it took a split-second for instinct to kick in, but a split-second was all the time Ronnie had before Dean’s own punch sent the man spiraling to the floor.

It was about that time that Cam came running in from the back.  His speed and purpose suggested he somehow had an inkling about what was going on, which was, of course, impossible.  It didn’t halt him, though.  The cook raced past Dean and grabbed Ronnie by the collar of his shirt, lifting him to his feet and slamming him into the wall.  Cam’s face was even closer to the drunk than Dean’s had been, and the threat of menace was palpable throughout the diner.

“I told you,” Cam growled.  “If you came back here… if you touched her… if you _threatened_ her….”

“You’d rip his throat out with your teeth?” Dean smirked.

Cam glanced back at him, a bit surprised.  “Is there anyone here you aren’t screwing?” Ronnie spat.  “You let them tag team you?  A little Eiffel Tower action, you whore?”

Cam’s hands wrapped around Ronnie’s throat and lifted the man once more, but this time, it wasn’t to his feet—it was off the ground.  As the jackass’ eyes began to bulge, it was Dean who stopped the violence.  He grabbed Cam’s arm and tugged at it, surprised to find just how much resistance the corded muscle provided.  “He’s not worth it,” Dean echoed Ashley. Cam glared at him incredulously.  Despite the urge to do so, Dean didn’t look away.  They locked eyes, and after a moment, Cam nodded.

The cook released his grasp, and Ronnie collapsed to the ground, coughing and sputtering.  Dean pushed past Cam to bring the drunkard to his feet yet again.  “I suggest you get out of here before the only tag team happening here is the two of us taking turns beating you to a bloody pulp,” he warned, surprised that he was the voice of reason in this scenario.

“Fine,” Ronnie hissed, and Dean smiled.  “See?  Now was that so hard?”

The response was Ronnie spitting in his face.  Dean’s eyes had shut automatically, and he reached up to wipe the beer-soaked saliva away.  When the hunter opened his eyes once more, he smiled even more broadly.  In the blink of an eye, Dean cold-cocked him.  Ronnie collapsed to the floor unconscious.  Satisfied with the results, he walked over to the nearest table to grab some napkins out of the dispenser.

Ignoring the limp form on the tile, Ashley picked up the phone and dialed.  “Walt, it’s Ashley.  Ronnie showed up to Jimbo’s, drunk and making a scene.  He picked a fight with Cam and one of our customers.  Can you come get him and lock him up until he sleeps it off?”

Wiping his face, Dean was surprised to see Cam offering him the dishtowel slung over his shoulder.  “Thanks,” he said simply.  Taking it gratefully, Dean nodded in acknowledgement.

“Are you okay?” Ashley asked, rushing over to check on Dean, gingerly touching the welt that was beginning to form.  Cam disappeared to the kitchen.

He chuckled.  “Completely.  Not my first fight, and I highly doubt it will be the last.  I should have seen it coming anyway.  It’s not the first time I’ve been sucker-punched by a little BITCH either!”

Ashley laughed at him as she kissed his uninjured cheek, and Cam returned with another towel, this one filled with ice.  He placed it against the nascent black eye, and the surprisingly gentle touch and gesture left Dean dumbfounded.  Cam reached down, grabbed his hand and replaced his own on the makeshift icepack.

The waitress wrung her hands nervously, the adrenaline depleted, and she barely made it to one of the counter stools before starting to cry.  No sooner had she begun than Cam was beside her.  She buried her face against his broad chest, and he wrapped his arms around her, letting the girl sob into his shirt.  It was a strange, almost intimate display, and Dean felt like he was intruding even witnessing it.  To ease his discomfort, he attempted to ignore it, opting to return to his chicken and waffles.

They all remained like that in utter silence until Walt, who Dean learned was one of the local deputies, came about five minutes later and carried Ronnie away.  Ashley didn’t want to press charges, which Dean considered a mistake.  By the furrowed brow on the cook, Cam felt the same, but neither man vocalized their opinion.

Ashley excused herself to go “fix her face” in the restroom, and Cam came to retrieve Dean’s now empty plate and freshen his coffee once more.  He returned with a plate with two large slices of pecan pie and a fresh fork, only to disappear into the kitchen.

When the young woman returned, the beginnings of the breakfast rush was just starting.  None of them spoke of what had transpired, but it wasn’t awkward.  Instead, Dean was relaxed and almost meditative by the time Mrs. Lucy came in.  The unmistakable scent of citrus greeted him when she did, and without hesitation, she was packaging up two more slices of the pecan pie for the road.  He was still so full he felt as though he would explode.

“Anything interesting happen last night?” the widow asked.  “You three are strangely quiet.” It felt strange to be included with the cook and waitress, like he was a fixture in the diner.  Then again, in a way, he guessed he was becoming one.

Ashley looked panicked, as though she couldn’t bear the weight of lying to the elderly woman.  She didn’t need to, though.  Cam answered for her.  “No, ma’am,” he smiled.  He legitimately _smiled_ , and Dean just stood there, transfixed as he had been fishing the bills from his wallet to pay for his meal.  This time, he put three twenties on the table for the waitress, who had been virtually traumatized by the night’s events.  He dimly thought to himself that he was going to need to do something for money soon, because at this rate, he was going to go broke.

When Cam realized Dean was staring, the hunter almost blushed and tried to look away.  He was paralyzed by the effort, though, and he half-expected the man to start frowning at him.  Instead, the smile eased to a neutral expression.  The words that followed caught him off-guard….

“See you tomorrow?”

Dean could only nod.

 

When Dean got back to the bunker, Sam was already at it.  “Nap time?” his brother asked.  “Pecan?”

The elder Winchester shook his head, then nodded, realizing there were two questions in there.  “No to a nap.  Yes, pecan.  I need something to distract me, so what are we looking at?”

“Well, I’ve got a couple of leads,” Sam began, pulling up one of the websites and pointing at something.  He began speaking, and abruptly stopped.

Dean looked at his sibling.  “What?” he asked.  He knew the answer, though.  He hadn’t heard a word the taller man had said, and Sam knew it.

“That can wait,” the younger of the pair said, worry evident.  “You tuned out on me.  What’s going on with you, anyway?  You’ve been in a daze for, well, _days_.”

Dean scowled. He knew Sam was right.  “Eat your damn pie.”


	4. Lemon Meringue

Dean abruptly opened his eyes in the middle of the night again.  Not exactly new.  He didn’t wake up because of a nightmare.  _That_ , on the other hand, was new—very much new.  He was dreaming, as in the good variety.  He knew that much, but that was all he remembered.  He wasn’t bothered that he didn’t remember as much as he was curious what it was that left him feeling bizarrely relaxed and content.  Rolling over, he grabbed his phone to check the time.

_SHIT!_

It was some forty minutes or so past his unplanned (at least initially) wake-up calls.  He should have been relieved for the extra sleep, but he was anything but.  He threw off the blankets and practically leapt from the bed, stubbing his toe in the process.  “Son of a BITCH!” he shouted, hopping awkwardly to the dresser to grab some clothes.  He didn’t have time to take a shower.

That thought gave him pause.  _Why_ didn’t he have time to take a shower?  He didn’t dwell on it long, instead throwing on a fresh T-shirt, scooping up his jeans from the floor, and finally, pulling on his jacket.  He practically raced down to the garage and slid behind the wheel of the Impala.  He began speeding down the road, this time, _actually_ racing.  He was almost a quarter of the way to Jimbo’s before he bothered to look down at his speedometer… the needle was just shy of pegged at over a hundred and twenty miles an hour.

Why was he rushing?  Why was this so important to him?  He couldn’t explain it or why his head seemed so jumbled.  In his haste, he hadn’t left a note for his brother.  He also hadn’t taken the time to use his deodorant, which he was suddenly regretting.  He had collapsed into his bed after the hunt yesterday, still slightly reeking from something that made ghoul entrails smell like Armani.  Burning the candle at both ends was hardly anything new for anyone with the last name Winchester, but pre-dawn outings on top of the “usual routine” were leaving him drained to a degree that short naps couldn’t recharge.

 

When he got to the diner, Dean rushed into the restroom.  So quickly, in fact, that he didn’t hear the greeting he found himself expecting from Ashley.  He peeled off the now-only-relatively-clean tee and turned on the faucet.  He was staring at his reflection at the mirror as he had a few nights ago before he first found his way here.  Still shirtless, there were the countless telltale signs of his harsh existence… old burns, cuts, and the like, even some fresh bruises no more than a few hours old.  Cas always healed the major ones, which were the only ones he knew about.  These?  Dean viewed them as battle scars—trophies of the job.

His body was a canvas, painted in testimony to the hardship of a hunter’s existence.  Those who didn’t have an angel for a friend (basically everyone outside of the Winchesters and the survivors of Apocalypse World) had it far worse.  Then again, those who didn’t also tended to die a hunter’s death without resurrection via crossroads deal, black magic, angelic or demonic possession, or any of the other myriad ways he and Sam had cheated Billie time and time and time again.

For a split-second, this line of thinking forced his eyes to the shoulder that once bore the handprint of “the one who raised him from Perdition”.  The handprint was long gone, though memories of his time there remained, much like the Enochian sigils etched into the bones of his rib cage—a remnant of a practically bygone era when the forces of Heaven had enough numbers to warrant real consideration.  Shuddering at the recollection of hooks and chains through his flesh, he never spoke of when he was in Hell anymore, and gratefully, everyone had stopped asking as they were forced to focus on what lay ahead rather than behind.

Shaking it off, he ran his palms beneath the flow in the sink.  Using the stream of water, the soon-to-be-empty hand soap dispenser, and a copious amount of paper towels, he gave himself what amounted to little more than a whore bath.  He might have considered making it a true one, but as the restroom was a multi-stall affair, there was no lock on the main door.  His junk would have to stay within the confines of his denim.

He was glad Jimbo’s wasn’t one of those sometimes overbearingly environmentally-conscious places with an air dryer.  Trying to contort and maneuver into the positions necessary to dry off would have been a pain in the ass, not to mention awkward as all get out.  The privates would have mandatorily remained as such then, given the notion of potentially burning—or at least chafing—anything important was a non sequitur to a train of thought guided towards improving the situation.

Finally getting dressed again, he straightened the collar of his overshirt, marginally satisfied with the fruits of his labors.  Walking into the diner, he overheard a grumbled exchange.

“Is there any chance I can get a refill on this coffee at some point tonight?” one of the yokels at the far end shouted towards the kitchen.

Dean could see Cam glaring at the man.  “Travis, if you will give me a damn minute, I will get your damn coffee.  I’m a little busy now with _your_ order.”

There was no mistaking the harsh tone in the cook’s words.  He was very frustrated, standing in front of a grill that was practically overflowing.  The diner was packed, and the waitress, Dean confirmed, was nowhere in sight.  Cam apparently noticed him for the first time, and the hardened glare softened for an instant.  As before, not a smile, but somehow, it was enough.  The hunter was glad his presence offered some respite for this insanity.  “Dean,” he almost greeted, even if succinctly.  “You know the drill.  It’s going to be after I get caught up.”

Dean was close enough to hear Cam add under his breath, _“If I get caught up.”_

“Yeah, well I don’t want to fall asleep waiting another twenty minutes on cold eggs and hash browns like George who ordered at the same time I did,” the smartass patron fired back.

Something instinctual took over, and Dean walked over to the counter.  Moving behind it, earning an inquisitive stare from Cam (when he noticed), he grabbed the coffee pot and walked over to the guy’s table.  “How about you let me refresh that?” Dean smiled, pouring it nearly to the top.  “Anything else you need while he finishes that up for you?”

Travis shook his head no, and Dean started around the diner, refilling as many coffee cups as he could before he had none left to offer.  Returning the coffee maker, he started a fresh batch.  He and coffee were well-acquainted, and if he could do nothing else, he could make a decent pot.

He wanted nothing more than to go over to Travis, lean close, and tell him to just sit there quietly and work on his type II diabetes and his big-and-tall waistline while Cam worked on his food before he pummeled him into unconsciousness for being a complete dick, but he couldn’t do that to Cam, Ashley, or Mrs. Lucy.  This was a small community, and clearly, the tool was a regular.  Dean’s newfound friends—or whatever they were—depended on customers like the jackass….

That didn’t mean he couldn’t think of new and creative ways to shut him up.  Okay, in retrospect?  Maybe they weren’t all that new and creative.  Sometimes, the old standbys worked best.  Smiling inwardly at himself, he saw Cam start to emerge from the kitchen with a plate.  Dean hastened over there and took the dish.  “This one loud-mouth’s?” Dean asked quietly.  Still somewhat confused, Cam nodded subtly, and Dean cocked an eyebrow.  “Want me to spit in it?”

A small, imperceptible smile tugged at a single corner of Cam’s mouth.  It wasn’t noticeable to anyone more than a few feet away from him, nor were the words that accompanied it.  “Who said I already didn’t?”

 _Superman has a dark side after all… or at least a rebellious streak_.  _Good to know._

A stupid grin manifested on Dean’s face despite his best efforts at the contrary, though it probably went a long way at disguising the near-homicidal tendencies he was feeling when he delivered the food.  “Anything else, sir?” he asked, surprised at his ability to play along somewhat pleasantly.

Taking a pitcher of ice water to each table, he refilled everyone’s glasses, and when new customers came in, he even took their orders.  Initially, he just grabbed a napkin and scribbled what they wanted in an illegible scrawl that he had to decipher for the man at the grill.  By the third ring of the bell, signaling another arrival, Cam told him without looking over his shoulder, “Ticket book is under the register.”

Dean hesitated, wondering how the cook knew someone was coming rather than going, given that thus far, all the exiting patrons had settled their tabs with cash.  A throwback register, Cam walked over and gave him a ten-second tutorial on how to ring it up.  He unsurprisingly did it without a single utterance.

Two orders later, when Dean put pen to paper, Cam grunted from the kitchen.  “Print,” he told him simply.  A surprise _did_ come then, however.  The cook added, “Please.”

Almost two hours later, Dean was rolling silverware for the next shift, just like he’d seen Ashley do previously.  Cam finally caught up enough to come run someone named Gary’s credit card, and after another hour, the place was blissfully—albeit momentarily—empty.  Cam was quiet as always, scrubbing the grill clean when Dean heard him break his silence.

“Thanks.”

That was it.  No fanfare.  No pomp.  No circumstance.  Somehow, just as when the glare disappeared when Cam saw him, it was enough.  _No_ , he realized, _it was_ more _than enough_.  Dean was at a loss to ascribe the feeling to some logical connection to this man he barely knew… this man he _didn’t_ know.  And yet, on some level, he did.  If actions spoke louder than words, Cam was practically screaming.  He came across like an antisocial badass—Dean could relate—but he was genuinely a decent guy—Dean could relate to that, too.  Honestly, though, Cam was better.  He had a kind heart that was closer to Sam’s nature than Dean’s.  Maybe that was why he was drawn to him so.

That was it.  That had to be it.

Lost inside his head again, he hadn’t even heard Cam start cooking again.  It wasn’t until delicious aromas assaulted his nose—in the best way—that he realized the other man was standing before him with a plate.  Cam motioned to the counter, and when Dean seat, the cook sat next to him.

 _Did the temperature suddenly go up in here?_ Dean wondered idly.  Nope.  It was Cam.  Not in the proverbial sense, either, though the guy was absolutely hot—did he really just think that?  The man whose arms were practically rubbing against his own because of their size was hot, literally.  He felt like a furnace.  If standing in front of a grill for sixteen hours a day caused someone to run that hot, Dean was more than content to remain on this side of the plate.

He was also more than content to remain here—sitting right here.  He’d never felt more appreciated and understood than when Cam put a beer bottle in front of him.  “You didn’t get that here,” the cook told him.  “It’s for the ribs I’m making tomorrow.  Figured you could use it, and it’s the least I could do… so long as you’re not in any rush to get behind the wheel again.”

“I’ve got nowhere to be today,” Dean lied.  “Glad to help.”

Cam smiled—legit _smiled_ —and the first bite of food, which Dean had just taken, sat perfectly still in his mouth.  The cook raised an eyebrow towards him in scrutiny, and once again, one of Dean’s signature expressions betrayed him, leaving him exposed and raw.  “Problem?” Cam asked, and he was obviously concerned.  “You don’t like it?”

Dean finally, through an unbelievable display of concerted will, managed to chew and swallow.  “No,” he said, immediately regretting the words when he saw their effect on the other man’s face.  He backpedaled, “That’s not it—like at all.  I love it… seriously.  It’s just a little hotter than I expected.”

Cam tapped on the ice-cold bottle.  “That’s why I thought that might help,” the cook said.  “You seem like a beer guy.”

“Very much so,” Dean chuckled before scooping up another fork-full.

“Sorry about the brand.  It’s about as cheap as it gets, but since I’m using it for cooking, it doesn’t exactly need to be some artisanal selection,” Cam told him.  “Don’t really want Mrs. Lucy saddled with unnecessary expenses, either.  Besides, since we don’t have a liquor license, I can only keep on-hand what I’m using that day.  This is the only one I didn’t use in the brine.”

It struck Dean as odd that he would have saved a single bottle.  At least it was odd unless Cam had saved it for him deliberately.  Rewinding the night’s events, he now knew when the cook was mixing the brine.  It was after things had settled down, so deliberately saving him the beer was the only explanation.  “I’m not exactly picky when it comes to alcohol,” Dean laughed, patting his stomach.  “Or food… as you can see.”

He almost spit out the bite than followed when he reflected on what he had said.  Why in the Hell did he keep sticking his foot in his mouth?  “That’s not what I meant!” he quickly ‘apologized’.

Cam shook his head.  “I knew what you meant,” he assured him.  “And you look fine to me.”

Dean abruptly found it hard to swallow, like something was caught in his throat.  Cam grinned.  “Your smell, on the other hand….”

The hunter’s face turned a deep crimson.  “I’m not used to hard work and manual labor like you and Ashley,” he lied once more.  “I’m going to smell like a diner for hours, huh?”

“Somehow, I doubt that,” Cam told him, and Dean knew, deep in his soul, that the cook knew he was lying.  “Those aren’t diner smells.”

Dean brow furrowed.  Did he still smell like what they’d hunted yesterday?  There’s no way in hell a human could smell that this long after.  He was staring at Cam almost accusingly when the man smiled.  “You smell like the soap in the bathroom,” he told him.  “Enough that I suspect I need to refill the dispenser.”

“Maybe,” Dean cringed.  “I can do it, if you tell me where you keep the supplies.”

Cam shook his head.  “I’ve got it.  Again, least I can do.”

Dean smiled, still embarrassed.  “I’d ask if it’s that obvious, but I think you already gave me that answer.”

“Good sense of smell,” the cook clarified.  “Besides, there are far worse smells, though some far better ways of getting them on you.”

Was that innuendo?  Whether intended or not, it definitely was, and Dean shifted again, though for different reasons than before.  “So,” he stammered, “where’s Ashley anyway?”

Cam got up and took Dean’s now empty plate.  Depositing it into the sink, the cook’s pleasantries had faded, and Dean wondered what he’d said wrong.  He inexplicably wanted to take his words back.  “At the hospital.”

“She okay?” Dean asked, his worry evident.

“Her mother was rushed to the hospital just after her shift started,” Cam said succinctly, and Dean couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d offended the cook.  For whatever reason, this felt like a relationship—a _real_ one, like the ones he’d had with Lisa, Cassie, and Layla.  That is to say, he didn’t know what his misstep was, nor was he entirely sure it mattered.  Some part of him just felt like he needed to beg forgiveness for whatever boneheaded wrong he’d committed through ignorance.

The diner fell into silence, and it was anything but comfortable.  “How is she?” Dean asked.  “Her mother, that is.”

Cam just shrugged.  “I don’t know.  I haven’t heard from her since she left,” came the reply, and Dean felt like he was throwing gasoline on a fire, making the situation worse with every query.

Dean didn’t know how to set things right.  He knew he had to, though.  “Um, if you don’t know if she’ll be here for her next shift, I can come fill in, or at least try.  I know I’m not a real server, but I’ll do what I can.”

The tension in Cam’s posture seemed to drain, and although the man didn’t smile again when he said it, Dean breathed a little easier when he heard, “Yeah.” So strangely elated was he that he couldn’t be sure if he’d heard it followed by “I’d like that” or not.

 

Dean scarcely noticed the time until Mrs. Lucy walked in, oddly empty-handed.  As soon as she did, Cam smiled at her.  “Ashley had to leave.  Her mother was taken to the hospital.  She just left about five minutes ago,” he lied, which perplexed Dean.

“I just got off the phone with her,” Mrs. Lucy told him.  “She must have been on the road.  Viv is in ICU.  She had a heart attack.”

Cam seemed particularly affected by that, and Dean was able to piece together why.  Ashley had been in the diner when Mr. Phillips died of a heart attack.  The cook knew the girl would fear the worst, which was a very real possibility.  Dean hoped that it wouldn’t be the case.

When Cam went to the storeroom, Mrs. Lucy smiled at Dean.  “I know she left hours ago,” she revealed.  “George and Irene, two friends of mine, were in here a few hours ago.  Cam doesn’t want me to not pay Ashley for the shift.”

So, that was it.  It made sense, and Dean was surprised he hadn’t pieced that one together for himself.  “I would pay her anyway.  We’re too small for me to be able to help pay for things like insurance, but I can afford to make sure my family can afford to be with theirs when it counts.”

Okay, it was official.  Dean loved this lady.  He was smiling at her when she placed a hand on his cheek.  “I hear I have three employees to pay tonight.  Cam, Ashley, and the handsome young man that George and Irene said was doing an outstanding job of filling in.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he chuckled.  “I’m not a young man.”

“Darlin’, when you’re as long in the tooth as Irene and I are, _everyone_ is young,” she cackled.  “You’re not even half my age, and if I was still the woman that I was even twenty years ago, I’d show you how age is only a number.  Alas, I _am_ old, and you seem like the type that can only give his heart to one person at a time.  Guess I’ve missed my chance twice-over.”

Dean’s didn’t understand what she meant, but he wasn’t about to challenge the widow’s wisdom and kindness with pointless questions.  Instead, he just smiled at her.  “If you want to pay me, put it in the can with Cam’s contribution.”

“That’s incredibly generous,” she told him, leaning in to kiss his cheek, wiping off the remnants of lipstick that women of previous generations somehow inevitably left behind.  “I’ll do just that.”

She walked over to the dessert case and stared at it.  “Oh, sweetie, did you not get a chance to eat your pie last night?”

Dean could have slapped himself.  He hadn’t thought about it.  He hadn’t really thought about his stomach once until Cam had made something for him without prompting.  How could he forget about the amazing pie so completely?  Now that he could smell the fragrant lemon and see the perfectly formed meringue, though, his mouth was watering.  He started to speak, but Mrs. Lucy beat him to the punch.  She packaged up all of it that remained.  “You’re taking the rest of this.  I won’t hear another word about it,” she told him.  When he reached for his wallet, Mrs. Lucy swatted his hand so hard he recoiled.  “Boy, I will show how we disciplined our kids a half-century ago if you even think about pulling a single George Washington out of there after you’ve helped me out so.”

He could only laugh.  “Yes, ma’am.”

“Good,” she told him.  “I’m going to make a whole pie for you to take home with you tomorrow.  You can eat the whole thing or share it with someone special.  I promise, I won’t judge.”

Dean smiled.  She assumed he would be back tonight.  No, she _knew_ he would be back tonight… and so did he.  “Do you need any help bringing in the ingredients?” he asked her.

She shook her head.  “I’ve got everything I need in back already.  I’m going to make one of my standbys for when I don’t see any fruit that strikes my fancy.”

Cam returned to the kitchen as Glenn and Susie walked in.  “See you,” he told Dean before he vanished into the stockroom once more.  Knowing that the night cook would soon be leaving, Dean took that as his cue as well.  Pulling on his jacket, he realized just how much his feet were bothering him.  He started for the door before pausing to ask the elderly woman a question.

 

By the time Dean reached the bunker, he could barely keep his eyes open.  Sam grabbed the sack from him and peered inside.  “Wow, this looks amazing,” the younger Winchester told him.  Dean snatched it away from him long enough to withdraw two slices.  He growled, “Mine.”

“Okay, Tarzan,” Sam chuckled.  “I’ll leave you to your monosyllabic grunting, then.  Unless you actually wanted to see what I’ve come up with?”

Dean could barely focus.  “Not particularly,” he confessed.  “Insomnia again.  I think I need a day to catch up if you think you can handle things without me today.  Besides, I want to get to the diner early tonight.  Ribs that have been beer-brining since last night.  I’m betting they’ll sell out quickly.”

He neglected to mention—or deliberately omitted—that he planned to be working at the diner by nightfall.  Sam didn’t need to know everything.  If he did, he would start asking questions.  The questions didn’t frighten Dean nearly as much as coming up with a response.

“That sounds awesome, actually,” his “little” brother told him appreciatively.  “If it’s half as good as the pie.”

“It will be,” Dean said, almost defensively.  “I mean, it should be.  It probably will be.” Why couldn’t he make himself stop talking?  He felt like he had diarrhea of the mouth and constipation of the brain.

Sam glared at him like he was trying to solve a case.  Dean didn’t like it.  “Want me to come with you?” Sam asked.

“No,” Dean told him quickly— _too_ quickly.  “No sense being awake then.  I’ll bring you back some.”


	5. French Silk

The alarm startled Dean awake.  It really shouldn’t have, as he was the one who set it, but he usually relied on his internal version.  He did not, however, want to chance oversleeping and leaving Cam in a lurch.  That brought him to his feet far earlier in the night than previously, but he was rested enough.  Sam took one of the others along as back up, and to be perfectly forthright, the research leading up to that point wasn’t exactly Dean’s forte anyway.

Yawning, maybe Dean didn’t rest as well as he’d initially thought.  His body was playing catch up, but it wouldn’t be the first time that he’d basically told his body to go screw itself as he had a job to do.  He remembered something his brother had nerded over in discussion about rest and sleep patterns.  Dreams, REM sleep, alpha something-or-other.  It was a monotonous blur, but the gist was that you dreamed during a certain stage of sleep when your unconscious state was strongest.  You needed to finish the dream to allow your mind and body to unwind… at least that was what Dean got out of Sam’s droning.

The thing about alarms?  They could pull you out of that stage, which meant your mind held onto the dream—or nightmare—for a while before it faded away.  Dean was dreaming when his phone blared like a klaxon in the stillness of the bunker.  Far enough removed from the other rooms not to disturb anyone, he sat on the side of the bed for a moment trying to make sense of it all.

He’d dreamed about Cam.  Not some lascivious, imagined thing, but rather, he dreamed about last night.  He dreamed about sitting next to the man at the counter.  He could feel the warmth emanating from the cook’s body.  He could still feel the slight touch as Cam’s bicep touched his own.  It felt… _nice_.  He was at a loss to explain it to himself in any terms that could be expressed with words.  He was certainly at a loss to explain the connection.

Dean knew practically nothing about the stranger, aside from qualities like generosity that set him apart—and above—about ninety percent of the population.  And yet, there was something that called to him, like a kindred spirit.  He didn’t know Cam’s history, but he’d wager Baby that the guy had a tragic story to tell.  The cook had definitely been hurt and damaged in the past.  He’d pushed beyond it, but the walls he’d erected to protected himself remained.

In short order, the hunter realized that he relied on Cam’s presence for reassurance like he did with Castiel.  He trusted the man’s character as he had Benny’s.  He wanted—even needed—to almost protect him… like Sam.  That made _zero_ sense.  That level of attachment didn’t just manifest over the course of days.  It was cliché to assume otherwise, like love at first sight, which was a notion Dean dismissed a ludicrous (not to mention confused with lust, which made complete sense).

Dean noted that he was still standing at the edge of his bed.  He had not yet moved, but he’d been standing there for a couple of minutes trying to figure out why he was drawn to a handsome, mysterious cook and why his brain had fallen down the rabbit hole of insanity such as immediate attraction.  He also wondered why he kept thinking Cam was handsome.  Dean and his brother were good-looking, as much now as in their younger days, which was a fortuitous asset they often exploited in whatever confidence scams they needed to run to make a buck or get the job done.  He wasn’t oblivious to a man’s appearance.  He just usually didn’t dwell on it, much less be aware of it more than once.

Maybe it was because he wasn’t really around people, other than hunters, on multiple occasions enough for it to happen.  Maybe Cam would look better without the beard.  Maybe Dean only thought that because he wasn’t a fan of beards—on himself, his brother, or anyone else.  Yeah, that was it.

Maybe he needed to stop thinking about Cam’s face and go take a cold shower before he started questioning why he couldn’t get it out of his head.

Cold water shocked him out of thinking about anything.  He followed that up with a hot shower.  The reasons were twofold.  First and foremost, it would help him unwind his muscles, if not him.  His legs and feet had been killing him after working as a server, and he had a renewed appreciation for the men and women who waited tables day in and day out as a living.  He made a mental note of tipping even better than he already did.

Secondly, it was a common misconception that cold showers woke you up and hot showers helped you relax.  Both did so initially, but eventually, their effects on the body flipped.  It had something to do with heart rate, Sam had needlessly explained, but if the elder Winchester was being completely honest, it made sense.  People who fell through the ice didn’t keep railing at drowning or freezing to death.  Eventually, they sort of drifted off to sleep, albeit the more permanent variety without help.  Dean dimly remembered something about pseudo-shock and compensatory mechanisms.  The crux of it was that if you wanted either extreme in temperature to do what most expected them to, you couldn’t stay in the water too long.  Not really an issue, given a hunter’s schedule.  There were seldom opportunities to enjoy such creature comforts.

 

There was more traffic on the road than Dean expected, which was probably dumb.  The two hours didn’t drag on, but nor did they fly by.  Of course, the fact that it wasn’t two hours probably helped with that.  He really needed to start watching his speed if this was going to be a regular thing before the local badges paid attention to his presence or pattern.

Who was he kidding?  It was already a regular thing.

 

When he got to the diner, he walked inside hastily.  He wasn’t sure if the previous waitress would still be there, but she would inevitably be ready to go.  If she had already gone, then Cam needed his help.

Dean wasn’t sure what to expect, arriving so early.  More patrons, perhaps?  The overflowing parking lot confirmed that suspicion before he’d tugged on the door handle.  What he did _not_ expect was to see Ashley inside.  “Hey, Dean,” she smiled at him, looking a little haggard.  The poor girl clearly hadn’t slept.  “You’re early tonight.  All the booths are full, but if you want to take a seat at the counter, I’ll grab you some coffee.”

Why did he feel almost… disappointed?  He could have slept in a while longer, and for the briefest of instants, he thought about leaving, despite the smile he managed to paste on his face at the young woman’s greeting.  Both disappointment and disingenuity vanished without a trace when he was greeted once more.

“Hey, Dean,” Cam smiled at him.  Yeah, full-on _smiled_.  Dean’s knees threatened to buckle, and some part of him wanted nothing more than to be the reason for that smile from now on.  And just like that, the dream that had returned to whatever nether realm had spawned it came flooding back to him.  The smile was a bit toothy, tiniest bit crooked and uneven, and it was completely perfect.

 _What the actual fuck?_ Dean asked himself.  What was wrong with him even caring about Cam’s smile, no matter how much it suited his handsome face by daring to mar it with some human defect, regardless of how slight.

He was standing there, transfixed, when Ashley spoke again.  “Did you want to wait for a table, hon?” she asked him, more than a little confused… but not half as confused as Dean himself.

Spurring himself into some pittance of action, Dean stopped smiling like a crazy a person.  He shook his head and walked to the counter.  “Nah, the counter’s fine,” he assured her, and it was.  It was more than fine.  It was closer to the kitchen.  After last night, he didn’t feel obligated to respect any boundaries as a customer, so he walked behind the counter to grab a mug and fill it with coffee, emptying the pot.  Setting it behind him, he started to brew another batch when he realized Ashley and Cam were watching him.  Hesitating mid-motion, he asked, “Is this okay?”

She didn’t get a chance to answer.  Cam beat her to it.  “Yeah,” he assured him, smiling once more.  It was a smile of amusement, and Dean was glad his absentminded behavior was funnier than he was intentionally, obviously.  He liked the easy smile, and he was beginning to think it wasn’t quite as unfamiliar on that handsome face as he’d once believed.

“More than okay,” Ashley smiled, walking over to kiss his cheek, earning a few teasing catcalls and whistles from some of the other people in the diner.  “I hear I owe you a thanks for helping him out.”

“It was no big deal.  I was glad to do it,” he blushed… and he was glad to do it.  Even more by the end of the night than he had been originally.

“Yes, it was,” she assured him.  “Thank you.  Whatever you want tonight is on me.  It’s the least I can do.”

Dean nodded, having zero plans of letting her make good on her offer.  He would order like normal, so he wouldn’t seem ungrateful at her own display of gratitude, then he would leave cash on the table as always.  Finishing at the coffee maker, he took a seat on the stool behind his cup.  The steam assaulted his nostrils in the best way as he took a sip, surprised when Cam was standing next to him.  For a guy his size, he was scarily quiet.  He probably wouldn’t have noticed as quickly as he had, had he not gotten a whiff of cooked pork and the faintest hint of a beer that made his stomach grumble with familiarity.

“Hey, that’s my order!” one of the guys at the far end of the diner called out.  Dean was at a loss what to say.  He had only just arrived, so by all rights, the guy was probably correct.  He started to say something, given pause only by acknowledging that he didn’t know _what_ to say.

He didn’t have to.  Cam took care of it in short order.  “He saved my ass last night, Frank, not to mention half of you guys, who I might have killed by now for getting on my nerves,” the cook told him.  “I owe him.  Besides, this order looks better than the rest of them, meaning it’s way too good for the likes of you.”

Cam smiled, his tone light, and Dean could have sworn the man gave him a playful wink before returning to the kitchen.  When he reflexively averted his eyes, they followed Cam’s retreat to the grill.  They drifted to a strange position on said body, no doubt prompted by the “saving his ass” comment… not half as strange as appreciating the form beneath the denim with each stride.

Shaking it off, Dean was beginning to think that the long hours were to blame for the cook’s usual sullen behavior—that maybe he was always this friendly and open earlier in the night.  If that was the case, he was going to have to start coming in this time every night.  Mutterings and half-whispers quickly refuted this assumption, and Ashley confirmed it, bringing over some silverware and a glass of water.  “Maybe I need to take a night off more often,” she laughed.  “He’s never said so much at one time since he started here, and he certainly hasn’t seemed so….”

Her voice trailed away, but part of him felt like the next word was going to be “happy”, which made no sense.  Instead, she stared at Cam for a moment before doing the same to Dean.  He bristled uncomfortably under the scrutiny, so he tried to change the subject.  “So, how’s your mother?”

The question seemed to sate her curiosity, and she smiled.  “Doing well, thanks.  She had a heart attack, but they got her to the hospital in time.  They said she had a 95% blockage in three places and shouldn’t have made it.  The doctors can’t explain how she did, but I just chalk it up to her being the same tough old bird who spanked my tail every time I got into trouble as a kid.”

Dean didn’t really know much about blood vessel blockages or what degree was a problem, but it sounded bad.  He settled comfortably into their friend-slash-Dad-zone dynamic when he mused that her last statement would have once conjured a very different image—not to mention reaction—than the relief and sympathy he currently felt.  “Did they have to do surgery?” he asked, knowing enough to at least have some clue about bypass surgery.

“No, thankfully,” she answered.  “They did something called a cardiac cath.  They ran a wire in through her groin and into the vessels that were clogged, inflated a balloon on the end, and opened the flow.  They said the results were better than they could have hoped, and she should feel like a new woman.   They’re keeping her for forty-eight hours for observation, so she might get to go home tomorrow.”

“That’s great news,” he told her truthfully, spared any lingering awkward conversation when someone flagged her for her attention.  She placed a hand on his shoulder, giving him a light squeeze before excusing herself.

As Cam worked on orders, bouncing between the stove, oven, and grill with practiced ease, Dean started in on the ribs.  They were a delightful combination of moist and chewy with a crisp char on the outside.  He could pick up on every ingredient in the sauce, and the beer notes both accentuated the flavors and brought them all together.  Dean was making a mess all over his mouth and fingers, but he couldn’t quite bring himself to care.

Dean was so entranced in savoring every delicious morsel that he didn’t think there was anything on Earth that could take away from tasting the ribs and losing himself in the moment.   He soon found out just how wrong he really was when he heard a sound emanating from the kitchen.  He literally sat there, slack-jawed with his mouth wide open, as a baby cried.  “Hey, Ash,” Cam called gently.

“On my way,” the waitress replied, rushing to the cook’s side to scoop up an infant against her bosom.  She shushed and cooed the child, rocking him gently in her arms.  “I’m going to take him in back for a minute.”

Finally remembering to swallow, he followed it with a drink.  He leaned forward to get a better look—to see if what his eyes registered matched with his ears—but Ashley was already out of sight.  Glancing over at Cam, Dean raised an eyebrow.  “Is it take your kid to work day and I missed the memo?” he asked.

The other man grinned at that, and the smile Dean was rewarded with brought one to his own lips without a thought.  “She didn’t have anyone to babysit,” Cam explained.  “With her folks in the hospital, there was no one to keep him.”

“What about Ramona?” Dean asked, remembering the girl’s name from when Ashley had mentioned it previously.

“Big exam at the college, which is the next county over,” he began.  “One of those major ones—counts for half your grade sort of thing—so she couldn’t miss it.  She’s going to come get him when she’s done, though.”

The hunter nodded in understanding, idly wondering if Mrs. Lucy weren’t an option.  Since the cook didn’t offer the information, though, Dean thought it best not to ask.  “Well, if she needs to take care of the little one, I’m here,” he offered.  “I mean, I came in with the expectation of working a whole shift.  Even if it’s just for a few hours, I’m glad to help.  Put me in, coach.” _Put me in, coach?_   Dean wondered if that sounded half as lame coming out of his mouth as it did in his head.

Cam smiled.  “Thanks for that,” he told him.  “I would have called you and told you to sleep a little longer, but I didn’t have your number.”

Dean wondered if his body betrayed him by showing just how fatigued he was most nights since coming in.  Well, how fatigued it had been, anyway.  He’d begun feeling strangely invigorated over the last few days, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why.  He loved his brother, and hunting was the only life he knew, but this?  This felt simple and right in a way that he didn’t truly understand, and he didn’t want to overthink it, lest it stop feeling that way.  “I know a way to fix that,” Dean chuckled.  “The not having my number, not the bags under my eyes that you’re saying make me look like Hell.”

Cam chuckled in return.  “You look fine.  Better than fine, actually… you look good,” he said, staring at Dean for a half-second before casting his eyes back towards the grill.  “Right back pocket.”

Dean’s eyes had locked with the pensive hazel gaze just long enough to paralyze him.  The paralysis extended beyond his body to his brain as he failed to catch what the other man said, or at least his meaning.  All he could stammer in response was an idiotic-sounding, “Huh?”

“Right… back… pocket,” Cam repeated more slowly, emphasizing each word while failing miserably to conceal his humor at doing so.  “That’s where my phone is.  Generally speaking, when someone suggests giving someone their number—as I’m assuming you just did—it requires both an exchange and a phone, at least by modern standards.  My hands are presently occupied, so it seemed like a good idea to do it now before we got too busy or distracted and forgot.”

Why, in the name of all that was holy or the reverse, did the way Cam talking about swapping phone numbers make Dean feel like some giddy schoolgirl?  He felt ridiculous, and the heat rising to his face undoubtedly made him look even more so.  As he tried to suppress the sensation, his brain caught up once again… and once again, all he could utter was, “Huh?”

 “Get the phone out of my right back pocket and put your number in it,” Cam full-on laughed at that one, shaking his head.

Dean was normally one of those guys who maintained very strict boundaries with other men, particularly ones he didn’t know.  Admittedly, Sam was an exception, because they were brothers, as was Castiel, because he didn’t know how to respect boundaries.  There was also Jack, but the boy was like a son.  There were others over the years to some extent, but now there was Cam.  Who was this guy?  Not exactly a stranger, but Dean didn’t honestly know him, either.

 If he was being honest, though, he knew he wanted to, enough that he wasn’t bothered by the notion of reaching into the cook’s pants—which should have sent his heterosexual sensibilities into sarcastic defense mode.  It was a pocket, after all, and a back one at that.  He walked over behind Cam and withdrew the phone, which was minimal in aesthetic and frills.  Unsurprisingly, the man preferred function over form, and only a bare minimum of that even.

There was no code locking the phone, and it was little wonder why.  There were only a handful of numbers, and none had a name attached to them.  One of them was even an international number by the looks of it.  For some reason, Dean thought it was somewhere in South America, but he couldn’t be sure.

Though Cam clearly had a head for numbers, when Dean programmed his number, he added his “Dean” as well.  He was grateful the archaic design meant he couldn’t figure out how to take a picture.  He had briefly considered it as a joke, but he quickly pushed it aside when he was struck by a strange sort of self-consciousness.  “There,” Dean said, about to return it to its denim confines, but Cam stopped him.

“Wait,” the cook told him.  “Send yourself a text from it, so you have my number, too.”

Dean could have slapped himself.  It was a stupid oversight, and he was glad Cam had the presence of mind to remember it.  Dean certainly wanted the number, and when his own phone chirped in echo, he realized something.  He’d given Cam his number… his _real_ number.  It wasn’t some burner phone.  It wasn’t even the one he kept but only checked on occasion.  This was the number that he’d had for years—the one that only a handful of people who weren’t Winchester by blood or proxy had.

Dean was okay with that… more than okay.  Smiling inwardly, he returned the phone and stepped back clumsily when Ashley returned, crying baby in tow.  “I can’t seem to get him to calm down,” she all but cried herself.

The hunter felt for the young woman who was at her wit’s end.  “I make no claims to having some sort of magic touch,” he told her, “but want me to at least give you a break?”

“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she smiled weakly.

“Good thing you didn’t,” he smiled back, reaching over to take the little one from her.  Swaddling the tiny babe into the crook of his elbow, he rubbed his thumb across the tiny chin.  The baby wasn’t soothed completely, but he was far closer than he had been for his mother.

Ashley breathed a sigh of relief.  “He likes you.”

“I hope so,” he grinned, feeling Cam’s eyes on him.  Looking over at the other man, he added, “I like him, too.”

“Dean, this is Charles Aaron McGill,” she told him with obvious pride.  “Charlie, this is Dean.”

The hunter smiled more broadly.  “Charlie is a good name.  It belonged to one of the strongest and bravest people I’ve ever known.  If you grow up to become half the person she was—or that your mother is—you’ll have done that name very proud.”

As he spoke, he realized he’d earned some quizzical looks from Cam.  The other man was studying him, as though he was trying to figure him out.  It was a scenario knew all-too-well, although from a different vantage point.  Finally, the cook spoke.  “You’re good with kids,” he said matter-of-factly, though the prompting to put it out there in the first place made Dean suspect there was some measure of surprise there.

“I’ve got a little brother, though he’s not so little anymore.  The freak is some six-five barefoot, and I swear he’s still growing, but he’ll always be my little brother,” Dean explained.  “He’s only a few years younger than me, but it was my job to protect him growing up.  We… lost someone when we were young—Sam was still a baby about Charlie’s age really—and our parental situation kind of spiraled.  Someone needed to look out for him, and that someone was me.”

Cam listened intently.  “I lost family, too,” he finally said, shattering the silence, “though I was older.  I was still the pain in the ass little brother, though.”

“Baby of the family,” Dean smirked.

“Middle,” Cam corrected.  “I was as immature as they come when I thought I lost everything.  I didn’t know just how wrong I was until years later.  Luckily, once I became the big brother, I had a chance to do something right—to protect my family.  My younger sister is still alive today because of a choice I made, and it’s a choice I would make again a thousand times over.”

Dean knew there was more to that story— _way_ more—just by what he could pick up not just in the other man’s words but his tone as well.  He wanted to know the story, and he could probably find it if he looked… but he wanted Cam to tell him.  He wanted more.  Every layer he peeled back revealed a deeper mystery about the cook, and Dean couldn’t satisfy his desire to know everything.  He felt some urge to get to know the man, fully exposed and his past laid bare.

Charlie started growing restless and fussy, and in short order, the tears and screaming were back.  “Guess I’m not such a natural after all,” Dean smiled apologetically to Ashley, who reached for her son. 

Cam stepped in between and took the baby.  “Watch the grill,” he said though whether to Ashley or Dean, neither was quite certain.  Dean was no short-order cook, but he knew to move things around before they burned.  He did so vacantly, watching Cam with Charlie.

“He’s teething,” Cam smiled as the baby drifted off to sleep almost immediately.  Dean was just about to ask how the other man had managed it, but his eyes played tricks on him.  He could have sworn something black was crawling—or coursing—up Cam’s forearm.  Squinting to readjust his focus, the image was gone as suddenly as it had appeared.

He couldn’t contemplate it overmuch, his attentions pulled away by the concern in Ashley’s voice.  “What is it, Walt?” Dean remembered the name.  He was the local sheriff.

“I wanted to let you both know,” he began.  “Mrs. Lucy has been rushed to the hospital.”


	6. Dutch Apple

“Oh, my God,” Ashley managed, barely above a whisper as the dish in her hand went crashing to the floor, smashing into untold pieces.  The abrupt noise startled Charlie, who began screaming at the top of his lungs.  While Cam tried to settle the child, Dean noticed the young waitress shaking.  He walked to the back to grab a broom and dustpan.

“Don’t move until I get this up,” Dean told her, but it was clear that she wasn’t listening.

Finally, it was Cam’s question that broke her paralysis.  “What happened, Walt?” Whatever gift the cook had with infants—at least that one—worked his magic once more, and the baby settled back to sleep in the man’s arms.

The sheriff was calm… an occupational “hazard”, no doubt.  “Irene went over to her house this evening to drop off some tomatoes that she had grown in their garden.  Mrs. Lucy didn’t answer, and Irene started to leave, but something didn’t feel right to her.  George went and checked the garage.  The car was still there, so they called the fire unit.  They came and broke down the door.    Mrs. Lucy had fallen.”

“No wonder she didn’t answer when I called to see if she could keep Charlie,” Ashley cried, tears streaming down her cheeks as she brought her hand over her mouth.  “She always answers.  If I hadn’t been so worried about my own problems, I would have realized something was wrong.  Maybe I could have done something… maybe they would have found her sooner….”

Dean shook his head, setting the handle of the broom against the counter.  He placed his hands on her upper arms to steady her and force her to look at him.  “You can’t think like that.  There’s nothing you could have done, and even if there were, it’s not your fault.”

The sheriff nodded in agreement.  “He’s right.  She fell, and when she did, she hit her head.  She was knocked out cold, but she’s already doing better.  She’s awake and giving them Hell over at County General.  They said they would have kept her for observation after a fall anyway, given her age, but it looks like she’s broken her hip.  She’s going to be there a while.”

Ashley couldn’t stop crying.  “She’s family.  She’s been like a grandmother to half this town for generations.  Charlie needs her around like I had her growing up.  He can’t lose her… _I_ can’t lose her.  I need to go see her,” she declared, hastily heading for the door before stopping after she’d crossed about half the span, realizing that the boy she’d just spoken of was still a few feet away in the kitchen.  She rushed towards Cam, who turned slightly away from her.

“Ash, you’re in no shape to drive,” the cook told her.  “You’re not thinking clearly.  If you leave now, in the state you’re in, you’re a danger to not only yourself but your son as well.”

In a half-dazed and more-crazed state, she seemed to respond to that.  “You’re right.  I need to find someone to take him.  It’s late, and it’s the middle of the night.  Besides, the hospital is no place for a baby.  He could make someone sick, or he could get sick.”

Dean and Cam exchanged looks with one another.  The girl was talking, but her thoughts existed in a self-contained vacuum.  Nothing was registering.  “I’ve got him,” a voice offered from the door.  The girl it belonged to looked roughly the same age at Ashley, and when she approached Cam to take Charlie, the other man gently passed him to her.  Dean quickly surmised that this was Ramona.  “Walt, can you drive her over there?  I’ll get someone to come pick her up later and bring her back to her car.”

Charlie nestled himself against Ramona’s bosom, and it was clear that he was comfortable with the girl.  She was equally clear that she was upset, but less so than Ashley.  “Mom called me and told me about Mrs. Lucy,” she explained, answering the unspoken question.  “I already had my meltdown in the car on the way over here.”

“Dean, can you take her?” Cam asked unexpectedly.  Dean turned towards the other man, confused as to why Ramona’s query of Walt wouldn’t suffice, but something in the cook’s visage halted his words.  Without fanfare—just furrowed brow and intense hazel eyes—an unspoken plea was on the handsome face.  It was somehow more expressive than Dean had ever seen him, conveying his message.  Cam cared for Ashley, and he wanted someone with her… someone that he trusted.

Not trusting his own words, Dean could only move his head up and down in the affirmative.  There was relief in Cam’s smile… another of those incredible smiles.  “I’ll bring her car once my shift is over,” the cook suggested.  “If you don’t mind bringing me back here afterwards?” Dean most assuredly did not mind, nor did he possess the ability to string his thoughts together to form a coherent sentence.  He just kept nodding.

“Dean, huh?” Ramona asked.  “I hear I owe you for helping my homegirl out.  If there’s anything I can do to thank you, don’t hesitate to ask.  Seriously, just name it.” There was an intense scrutiny as she quite literally looked the hunter up and down.  As much as it was nice being reassured that he wasn’t automatically in the Dad-slash-friend zone for every twentysomething girl, there was something in her “appreciation” that made him shift uncomfortably for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on… and why could he swear he heard a growl coming from the kitchen?

Glad to put some distance between himself and the very attractive—dangerously so—Ramona, Dean was at the door before he thought of something.  “What about you?” he asked Cam.  “If she and I both leave, you’re going to be here all alone.”

“I’ll manage,” Cam told him.  “Go… and be careful.  I don’t want to have to visit more than one person I care about in the hospital.” Dean was shocked by the uncharacteristically emotional sentiment, and for a moment, he blushed, imagining himself the subject of the statement before he decided the other man obviously meant Ashley.

 

As they drove towards the hospital just over an hour away, the trip was an exercise in its own dichotomy.  Ashley either rambled incessantly—a jumble of nerves and worry—or she simply sat there—sullen and silent.  Dean was at a loss how to react, much less comfort, either extreme.  He let her talk when clearly, she needed it, but he wanted to fill the quiet.  He just had no idea what to so, so he remained quiet then, too.  It wasn’t therapeutic or helpful, but those attributes were more in his brother’s skillset than his own.

He breathed a sigh of relief when they reached the hospital, which was the typical tiny affair one expected to find in smaller pocket communities.  Dean and Sam had frequented the type on more than one occasion to get patched up early in their “careers”, but looking at what amounted to little more than a glorified clinic—both now and in retrospect—he wondered if the scale of their staffing and technology might be defined as sketchy at best.  Nonetheless, beggars couldn’t exactly be choosers.

Dean dropped the young woman off at the front entrance of the hospital.  He rationalized it to both himself and to her that he would take the opportunity to find a parking space, but the reality was such that finding one took the concerted effort of opening his eyes and selecting one of multitudes.  Mostly, Ashley was so on edge that Dean feared she was going to open the door with Baby still moving, so this small concession seemed easier in the long run.

Despite it all, in the two or three minutes it took for him to follow Ashley inside, there was no sight of her.  An information desk was staffed with an elderly woman in a pink jacket.  Her name tag identified her as “Mae”. “Hi, there,” he smiled, turning on the charm.  “I was wondering if you could direct me to where I could find Mrs. Lucy?”

“Who?” she asked, and instantly, Dean realized his mistake.  While he hadn’t asked for her by her last name, he was one-hundred percent certain that the withered crone before him knew who he was talking about.  He dug around in his brain, essentially rewinding to replay every conversation he’d had since he first set foot in Jimbo’s.  Finally, he found what he was looking for.  “Mrs. Phillips.  Lucy Phillips.”

The woman eyed him up and down dismissively.  “We don’t have anyone here by that name,” she said snidely.  He was just about to call on his old standbys in behavior when Ashley appeared from down one of the hallways.  “There you are,” she said, hastily walking over to take him by the hand, her not-so-gentle tug urging him to follow.  He contemplated sticking his tongue out at the old biddy, who was practically glowering at him in judgement.  He knew that look.  He had _given_ that look.  It was the “robbing the cradle” look, and somehow, this woman so long in the tooth she should already be dust made him feel old, which, in turn, made him feel self-conscious.

Bravado, whether real or imagined, normally defined Dean.  Robbed of that, he was quiet, barely managing to eek out, “Why did she say there was no one admitted named Lucy Phillips?”

“Because there’s not,” Ashley smiled softly.  “Her name is actually Mary.  I don’t know where Lucy came from.  She’s been Lucy since my grandparents were kids.”

“And little heathens your grandparents were,” Mrs. Lucy called from behind a privacy curtain in a side room.  The waitress threw it open wide, rushing in to embrace the matronly widow, who simply hugged her tight while the girl some half-century her junior could only sob into her hospital gown.

Dean’s own cheeks were moist, and he couldn’t wholly understand why.  He barely knew this woman, but on some level, he suspected the reason.  He’d gotten to meet Deanna Campbell briefly.  He’d never met Millie Winchester.  Grandfathers, whether Samuel or Henry, had been important players in his life.  Grand _mothers_ were another matter entirely.  He gravitated towards this woman, as all did, apparently, to fill that surrogate role.

“Hey, darlin’,” she smiled at him, reaching up towards his cheek.  Instinctively, he moved low and beside her.  The touch of her skin against his was a little cooler than before, certainly weaker, but there was something comforting in her very presence, as well as the tactile reassurance that age-spotted hand provided.  After a moment, she pushed both her juniors away.  “And that’s enough of that nonsense.”

Something in her tone was playful, but it would brook no argument.  “I’m old and bruised, but I’m not dead.  Mostly wounded in the pride, so Dean, you sit down here and indulge an old woman.  Ashley, you go to the powder room, fix your face, and then find all of us some coffee that won’t make me slap the taste out of someone’s mouth.”

Dean thought it kind of peculiar for Mrs. Lucy to ask someone who served people coffee for a living to go get her some when the place was full of people who would be glad—or at least willing—to do so in Ashley’s stead.  He said nothing, but the question was still answered no sooner than the young waitress was out of the room.  “Poor thing’s as sweet as she can be, but she gets wound up like a top when she’s worried.  I figured the humdrum routine task would pull her out of her own head long enough to calm down… at least a little.”

The hunter idly wondered if there was something remarkable about the intuition of the widow, or if all who reached that age possessed it.  He would like to think he would, if his life wasn’t destined inevitably cut short by the family business.  He would like to think it, but he honestly doubted it.  Sam?  Maybe.  Dean, on the other hand, was never one that could be described as cerebral.  He preferred actions to words, talking far more with his fists and bullets.  “Don’t just stand there,” Mrs. Lucy smiled at him.  “Pull up a chair.  I wouldn’t have asked you two to drive all the way just to see me, but since you have, you need to at least rest a few minutes before you go on back out to the actual world and your lives in it.  I’ll be fine.  Just broke my hip, which happens to the best of old fogeys.  The bones aren’t as strong as they used to be, but I’ll be back on the mend in no time.”

“I like the positive thinking,” he smiled.  “Is that what the doctor said?”

Mrs. Lucy shook her head.  “Nah, that little shit hasn’t said anything yet, because he needs to consult WebMD to make sure he knows what the Hell he’s talking about.  I know the drill, though.  Hip fractures aren’t exactly new, and believe it or not, the treatment hasn’t changed all that drastically from my nursing days.”

Dean cocked an eyebrow.  “You were a nurse?”

Mrs. Lucy pursed her lips at him.  “Don’t act so surprised.  I wasn’t always a waitress or a baker… and get that look off your face before I jerk a knot in your tail.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he chuckled.  The frankness she demonstrated reminded him of Missouri.  The old psychic was gone, but thoughts of her inevitably segued to her granddaughter.  He needed to check up on Patience just to make sure she was doing okay.  His line of vision drifted to her armband.  The ID bracelet confirmed what Ashley had told him.  “You don’t look like a Mary.”

The old woman cackled.  “It was Mary Alice back in the olden days.  Something about growing up in small country towns necessitated using middle names to separate me from the dozen other Marys I came up with.  All these unique names—stupid or otherwise—weren’t a thing in my youth.”

“Where did Lucy come from?” he queried, genuinely curious.

“Jimmy,” she smiled, broadly and proudly.  “Before all the wrinkles, I used to be quite the looker.  I enjoyed dressing to the nines, be it for work or pleasure, so one of my first indulgences when the paychecks from Pan-Am started coming was a pair of diamond earrings.  I thought they were the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.  To this day, I still do.”

Dean interjected.  “Pan-Am?  As in the airline?”

Mrs. Lucy nodded.  “First off, don’t interrupt.  It’s rude,” she chastised.  “Secondly, yes.  In the yesteryear of air travel when Pan-Am was at its peak, at least one flight attendant was a nurse.  I say, ‘flight attendant’, because the terminology stemmed from that.  The nurses were called flight attendants while the non-nurses were called stewardesses.  Our male counterparts were practically unheard of a that time, so no one considered the title to be sexist or the like.”

Dean didn’t know that, and he considered telling Mrs. Lucy so until he thought better of it.  She was in the middle of a narrative, and he thought it best to let her continue.  She did, “Anyway, I met my Jimmy on one of my first flights after buying those earrings.  He said he’d seen me on previous flights, but when I wore them, I was too beautiful to resist, so he had to ask me out.  He did, and I accepted.  The rest, as they say, is history.  Eventually, I left the airline, and we started Jimbo’s.  It wasn’t here—and not just in another location, it was in another town—but we finally settled here, and I’ve never looked back.”

When it was apparent that she was done speaking, he finally asked, “But where did Lucy come from?”

“The Beatles.  It was 1967, and that song was everywhere,” she grinned.  He shook his head, and she looked aghast.  “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?”

He shook his head again, and she rolled her eyes so hard that the hunter could practically hear them slamming into the back of her skull.  “You really don’t know the Beatles?  One of their biggest hits?  Do you have no appreciation of the classics?”

He shrugged.  “More of a Kansas, AC/DC, and Led Zeppelin type, I guess.”

“Don’t guess,” she scolded him.  “Have the courage of your convictions.  If that’s your music of choice, be proud of it… even if it makes you sound like a complete tool.”

Hearing her use the word “tool” made Dean start guffawing.  Actually?  He completely lost it.  He didn’t know why it struck him so funny, but it did.  His laughter started Mrs. Lucy in, and for a moment, he was concerned the efforts would cause her pain.  If they did, she certainly didn’t show it.  Instead, her raucous howls fed into his roars, which perpetuated the cycle for the widow.  Both could barely breathe and were in tears when Ashley finally returned.

“Mrs. Lucy, are you okay?” she panicked.

The older woman waved her younger counterpart off dismissively.  “Child, please.  It’ll take more than a little fall to put me out of commission.  I’m far more likely to laugh myself to death with this handsome stallion.”

Dean was torn between being flattered and being mortified at the widow’s salacious comments.  He settled on both at the same time and suddenly regretted his mockery of his brother with Gert—Mrs. Havisham, as Sam had called her.  Sea Pines, Massachusetts, was a lifetime ago, before angels and Lucifer, before countless deaths and resurrections (there had been only a handful by that point), before new friends were gained… and before so many others were lost.  There was something intrinsically simpler about his existence then, and he found himself longing for that clarity of purpose and relative lack of attachment.  Yet, he cared deeply for these people… Mrs. Lucy… Ashley… Cam.

 

The friendly banter continued for a while, but soon after a nurse came in to give Mrs. Lucy something for pain, the widow drifted off to sleep.  Ashley was soon behind her, leaving Dean alone in the silence with his thoughts.  It was far from his favorite place to be.  He finally got a reprieve when he saw some familiar faces.  He’d never been formally introduced, but after nearly a week, he felt as though he knew them.  “Hey, Glenn,” he nodded.  “Susie.”

“Hey, Dean,” the cook greeted.  Dean felt… _proud_ , for lack of a better word, that he had become enough of a part of the world of Jimbo’s that the pair knew him by name.  “How’s she doing?”

The hunter nodded.  It was enough to let them know that their employer and friend was out of the woods for the moment.  Breathing a collective sigh of relief, they relaxed enough that Dean noticed—for the first time—that they were roughly his own age.  He wondered just how long they had worked for the Phillips.  He wondered if that might have been his life in a world of normalcy where an Apocalypse wasn’t lurking around every corner.  He couldn’t decide if he could think of no worse a fate… or none better.

Susie placed a hand upon Ashley’s shoulder, gently shaking her to rouse her.  “Sweetie, let’s get you back to the diner.  Mrs. Lucy is doing okay, and your Mom is being discharged today.  I just saw your Dad out in the hallway.  Your folks will probably need help settling in, and your little man needs his own Mom.”

Ashley yawned in agreement, stretching quietly before standing to place a kiss on Mrs. Lucy’s forehead.  The two waitresses walked back out into the hall, and Glenn turned to Dean.  “It’s a lot to ask,” he began, “but would you mind staying until Cam gets here?  I don’t really want her to be alone.”

“No problem,” Dean agreed readily—too readily for any reasonable explanation he could come up with.  Glenn just smiled before he followed after his wife, and the hunter was left wondering why the man had some sort of knowing look on his face.  It was as though there were some inside joke that Dean wasn’t privy to.

Alone again, aside from the sedated woman lying in the bed, he moved two chairs to face one another.  The makeshift bed wouldn’t be comfortable.  Dean could tell that at a glance, and years of experience taught him all about sleeping in uncomfortable situations for however long he could manage.  Still, he had slept in worse, so contorting his body into some semblance of “comfort”, he drifted off to sleep, dreaming of nothing.  His subconscious wondered whether to be relieved or disappointed.

 

When Dean awoke, he felt a string of drool from his mouth to his shoulder.  Wiping it off, he realized he hadn’t brushed his teeth in more hours than he cared to admit.  He had that lovely combination of morning breath and a film that left a taste best described as “dead midget mouth”.  Dry heaving at his own imagery, he opened his eyes unceremoniously to see Cam and Mrs. Lucy grinning at him.  “Please tell me no one took a picture of that.”

“ _A_ picture?” Mrs. Lucy grinned, placing her cell on the tray table.  “Nope.  I’m suddenly very glad I’m not some throwback like the rest of my generation.  I can work the camera on my smartphone like a champ.  The hardest part is going to be deciding what filter to use before I put _them_ up on Facebook.”

The hunter was mortified, and his face must have betrayed that.  “Pshaw,” she snickered.  “I’m only kidding… about Facebook.  These are just for me.  Now go find one of those lovely nurses and get them to give you a toothbrush and toothpaste.  I know they have them because they brought them to me earlier, before I sent them away.”

Withdrawing the dentures from her mouth, she smiled a toothless, gummy smile before replacing them.  “These babies clean up just fine with a rinse in the dishwasher.  Just don’t use the detergent, or everything you eat tastes like Cascade for a week.  Now scoot!”

Dean obeyed, leaving a very amused Cam to watch him go.  The cook was silent, as was oft the case, but Mrs. Lucy was anything but—also true to form.  “You like him.”

Cam nodded.  “He’s… different, but yeah.  It’s easy being around him.  I was by myself for several years before I finally met some people that made me feel comfortable, I guess you could call it.  One was like a brother, others were friends that replaced a family I’d lost, including one guy who can drive me crazy like no other.  The dynamic I have with all of them, though?  None is like the way it is with Dean.  I can’t really describe it.”

“You just did,” she smiled.

He shrugged.  “I guess, but I still don’t know exactly what it is.”

Mrs. Lucy chuckled.  “Youth really is wasted on the young.  I’d explain it to you, but I think you need to figure it out for yourself… both of you do.”

Cam was curious of the insight she possessed, but rather than press the issue—which she clearly had no intention of talking about—he changed the subject.  “How are you?  Really?  Are you hurting?” He had only arrived a few moments before Dean stirred, and that was undoubtedly the result of the brief pleasantries they had exchanged.

“I’m fine,” she assured him.  “The pain medicine hits me like an elephant gun, but it’s good stuff.  It does its job and does it well.”

When he reached for her hand, she slapped it away.  He cocked a curious eyebrow at her, unsure of what offense he had given.  The widow smiled at him.  “I said I’m fine.  I appreciate the concern, but I don’t need you to take my pain.  I’m a tough old bird.”

Her words shocked Cam to the core.  He opened his mouth to speak, but his head failed to come up with a single utterance.  There was nothing _to_ say… nothing that could discount the knowledge she clearly possessed.  “Don’t look so surprised.  Yes, I know that you’re a werewolf, just like I know you’re not who you say you are.”

He shook his head, not in denial, but in confusion.  “How?” he finally managed.

“Because I’m old, and you don’t get to be this age without learning a little something about the world unless you’re content to be ignorant, which I’m not,” she explained.  “Besides, I’m old, not senile.  Curiosity can be satisfied with a simple Google search.  Camden Lahey died in combat a decade or so ago.  You look good for a dead man.”

He had nothing to say to refute her statements, because they were just that—statements, not questions.  Finally, he decided to simply nod, confirming her “suspicions”, which were anything but.  “Why did you hire me?”

She smiled.  “Because you offered to help, just like you helped my Jimmy.  You couldn’t save him, but you did what you could.  I saw your forearms as you held his hand until he was gone.  I held his other hand, because I promised I would be there in sickness and in health until death did us part.  I watched, though, as his pain left him.  Jimmy was as stoic as they came, but he wouldn’t have been able to take that much suffering.  You, however, did?  Those black streaks didn’t stop until he took his final breath.  You never stopped… not until _after_ his final breath.”

“I don’t know who you are, but I know enough,” she told him on the verge of tears.  They were tears of gratitude, however, not sadness.

He nodded.  Making sure they were alone, he reached for her hand again—more slowly to relay his intentions.  Offering it a little squeeze, he made sure they were still alone before he spoke.  “Derek,” he smiled at her.  “It’s nice to meet you.”

She grinned.  “I might just be learning your name, but I learned all I needed to know in those first moments I looked into those beautiful eyes.  I don’t know why you’re running, or who you’re running from, but you don’t have to run from me.  You have a home, for as long as you want it.”

“Thank you,” he smiled.  “It’s complicated, and nearly impossible to explain or believe—even to me.  I’m just worried by staying here so long, I’ve put you all in danger.  You, Ashley, Ramona, Glenn, Susie….”

“Dean,” she said.  It caught him off-guard, and though he didn’t acknowledge the name, he knew it to be true in his core.  He looked forward to seeing the man come into the diner.  He felt almost like family… pack… but not quite.  His lupine nature just seemed to connect with him in a way that it never had before.  Since he’d evolved, he was more in tune to nebulous, unseen ideas and forces that influenced his decision-making.  He’d learned to trust those instincts even more than he had done before those years ago at _La Iglesia_.  Thus far, he hadn’t been steered wrong.

He was about to try to coax some pearl of wisdom out of Mrs. Lucy when she repeated the name.  “Dean… did you find something?”

“Jackpot,” the other man smiled, holding up a cheap plastic toothbrush and a travel-sized tube of Colgate.  He pocketed them for later as he sat in the chair, adjacent to both the old woman and the cook.

The room descended into a bizarre silence before the widow sighed.  “Cam, did you have something you wanted to say to Dean?” Instantly, Derek panicked.  Was she going to tell Dean his name?  What he was?  That he was running from something?  Why did he want to be the one to tell him without prompting?  He didn’t want to violate the man’s trust that way.  He began to stammer unintelligible, garbled nonsense.

Mrs. Lucy pointed behind Derek, who turned around.  The restaurant-owner laughed.  “He brought you the pie that you missed,” she explained.  “The normal couple of slices for you to eat now—poor thing, you must be starving—and the separate pie I made just for you, as promised.  French Silk.  I’m assuming you like chocolate?”

Dean beamed, and Derek breathed a sigh of relief.  The hunter nodded emphatically.  “Yes, ma’am.  I’m human, so I love all things chocolate.”

“I don’t know,” she grinned.  “I bet even things that aren’t human love chocolate.  Speaking of, Cam, ….”

Derek struggled to keep up with the elderly woman’s rapid line of thinking.  Age might have slowed her body, but her mental acumen was anything but lacking.  He kept worrying that she was going to out him, though every fiber of his being decried his apprehension.  When Dean’s gaze moved to him, he silently prayed that whatever Mrs. Lucy was going to say would satisfy the untold questions that he was afraid might come in his worst imaginings.  “Speaking of, Cam,” she repeated.  “The pies.  I appreciate you bringing those to Dean, but we need to talk about pies for the restaurant.  They’re part of my bread and butter, as it were.”

Derek’s brow furrowed.  “I’m no baker.  I don’t know anything about making pies,” he confessed.

“You are, however, a smart boy, and I’m betting you can follow a recipe.  My mother’s cookbook is in the cabinet next to the fridge at home.  I want you to start with a simple one to get your sea legs under you.  There’s bags of fruit in my trunk.”

She smiled, obviously pleased with herself.  “Besides, I’m sure Dean will be happy to help you.”


	7. Apple Streusel

Derek led the way back to Mrs. Lucy’s house in his own vehicle, with Dean not far behind.  He kept his eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary, but satisfied that they weren’t being followed, he didn’t take an overly circuitous route.  When they pulled into the driveway, Derek took the opportunity to admire the Impala that the other man was driving.  Though he, himself, typically preferred contemporary models, it was hard to deny the appeal of the classic muscle car.  Noting his appreciation for “Baby”, Dean was almost preening in the periphery of Derek’s vision.  “Nice ride,” the werewolf admitted, walking into the home he currently shared with the widow.

Dean was close behind and starting to feel the hours he’d been awake taking their toll.  He stifled a yawn as the cook went directly to the kitchen.  He couldn’t imagine how “Cam” was still going, much less still willing and able to still stand in front of a stove, or in this case, an oven.  He watched the other man retrieve an old and weathered cookbook.

When Derek opened the cookbook, he sighed.  After staring at the yellowed pages inside for what felt like an eternity, he looked up to see Dean watching patiently (if awkwardly).  “Do you want a beer or some coffee or something?” Derek asked him.

Dean shook his head.  “Nah, I’m good,” he smiled, taking off his jacket and placing it on the back of one of the chairs at the kitchen table.

“I feel bad,” Derek confessed.  “You’ve been helping us out—me, Ashley, Mrs. Lucy.  Not only have you not asked for anything in return, you’ve been paying for the privilege half the time.  I’m not saying there aren’t any good Samaritans who give of themselves that freely.  In fact, I know someone who’s pretty much the epitome of the concept.  I guess what I’m asking, Dean, is are you a good Samaritan?”

Dean was puzzled by the line of inquiry.  The question was far franker and probing than he was expecting after coming here for such a banal task.  “No,” the hunter answered, equally frank.  “I’m no good Samaritan, but I try to do more good in the world than bad.  Some days, that’s harder than others, but for now, I came to help you bake some pies.  That’s not exactly saving the world stuff.”

Derek listened, and he heard a strangely even heartbeat.  No blips.  No upticks.  Dean was being honest, but a part of Derek that he couldn’t explain knew that Dean was holding back something.  A part of him knew that Dean was one of the good ones.  He couldn’t explain why he took such comfort from that.  “I feel wrong exploiting you for cheap labor.”

“For starters,” Dean smiled, “I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t cheap… I’m _free_ labor.  Secondly, you didn’t ask for help, I volunteered.  Use me, exploit me, whatever.”

Derek couldn’t help but grin at that, the smile on his face growing broader when Dean’s head caught up with his mouth and he realized exactly what he’d said.  “Technically, Mrs. Lucy ‘volunteered’ you,” Derek offered.”

“So, why does she think you need my help, anyway?” Dean asked.  “I mean, you may not be on her level, but I’ve seen you in the kitchen.  I’m something of a pie aficionado, but only when it comes to eating them.  You’re probably best suited to do this on your own.  I’ll probably do more harm than good.”

Derek shook his head.  “Not likely.  Baking isn’t like the cooking I do.  It isn’t truly instinctive or able to be improvised.  Whether chef taught at the finest pastry schools or passed down from one generation to the next, most baking is a precise science.”

Dean had never really heard it described in the terms “Cam” used, but it matched up with bits and pieces of things he’d heard some chefs say.  _Food Network strikes again_ , he mused.  “So where did you learn to cook anyway?”

“My father,” Derek replied.  “He was something of a Renaissance man, and he always seemed to know a little about everything—able to _do_ everything.  I watched him in the kitchen from the time I was a boy.  Some of my earliest memories were of him fixing dinner.  He’d ask me how my day at school was, and all that.  I didn’t realize just how much I was picking up from him until years later.”

Dean smiled.  “My Dad was more the bring home whatever drive-thru or greasy spoon fare was quick, cheap, and easy… no offense.”

Derek chuckled.  “None taken.  So, your Mom was the cook in the family?”

“No,” the elder man replied, the easy smile fading with a single syllable.  “Mom wasn’t much of a cook at her best, but she… _left_ when I was four.  It was a choice she made years before catching up with her.  She didn’t want to leave Dad or me or Sam, but there were mitigating circumstances.  She’s back in the picture now, though.  Still can’t cook to save her life.”

Dean was trying to push that previous mirth back to the surface, but the old wound was still very much there, and Derek cursed himself.  He’d spoken to Dean enough and overheard enough of the man’s conversations with Ashley that he knew better, but….  He hadn’t exactly forgotten, but something was clouding his judgment.  He was distracted.  It must have been concern for Mrs. Lucy.  Surely that was it.

“Sorry,” Derek offered quietly, not able to come up with anything better.

Dean shook his head, a genuine smile on his face as he switched gears in his head, remembering cereal and “Winchester Surprise”.  “Don’t be.  I’m morbidly fascinated by this ‘Leave It to Beaver’ existence of yours as a kid.  Nothing remotely resembling what I grew up with, so tell me more.  Dad cooked dinner.  What else?”

Derek chuckled.  “He also packed our lunches for school until we became too cool for lunchboxes and started eating in the cafeteria.  I’d kill for one of his PB&Js with the crust cut off, but more than that, I’d give anything for another breakfast with him.  Pancakes were his go-to, and they were amazing.  I’ve never come close in the years since.”

“It was always nice just hanging around while he cooked, but more so in the morning than the evenings.  My sisters were just girly enough to need all the extra time you would imagine getting ready in the morning.  That left me and Dad to talk while he made stack after stack.  He’d ask me about my classes, about girls, about basketball.  All of the usual father-son stuff.”

“Not the usual for all of us,” Dean admitted.  “My Dad was a bit… _focused_ on things.  I don’t know that I would have changed things.  I certainly can’t, so not much use imagining things differently.  Besides, I can’t imagine my Dad in the kitchen, not out of some antiquated ‘a woman’s place is in the kitchen’ shtick, but more of a ‘for the love of Chu… God, no’ kind of thing.  I mean, he was a marine, so I’m sure he had KP occasionally at the very least, but I never saw it in action.”

Derek dimly wondered exactly what kind of life Dean _had_ lived.  Military father.  A maternal figure that didn’t exactly conjure up the usual images, though Talia Hale fit that bill as well.  “My mother was the drill instructor in our family,” he grinned.  “Dad was always the softer touch.”

“I can tell,” Dean nodded, which caused Derek to cock an eyebrow.  The hunter explained, “You call your father ‘Dad’, but you don’t call your mother ‘Mom’.  It’s a subtle tell, but it conveys a lot about the dynamics.  It would have probably been the same for me and my brother if we hadn’t inherited the Kansas upbringing of our folks.”

Derek hadn’t ever thought about it in those terms, but it made sense.  Talia Hale was an Alpha.  Among born werewolves, there was a hierarchy that existed, even among family.  She had a responsibility to be a wise leader first, and a mother second.  That wasn’t to say she was cold or detached, but her emotions were always more controlled… reserved.  They had to be.

Derek didn’t realize how lost in his own head he’d become until he felt Dean’s eyes boring a hole into his head.  Not sure what to say, he said the first thing that came to mind.  “I can’t imagine.  I grew up in California.” Instantly, he regretted sharing that bit of personal truth.  It was far too revealing—potentially damning—and yet?  For some reason, he was glad he told the other man.

“Been through there a number of times over the years,” Dean commented casually.  “Haven’t really stayed long since I was a kid, though.  I have a few memories—some good and some bad.  My Dad was there on business, so we put down roots a lot longer than we typically did.  We were there long enough for me to have my first serious relationship, or at least what passed for serious or a relationship to a fifteen-year-old.”

Something registered in Derek’s hearing.  The pulse quickened.  Then an olfactory trigger tickled his nose.  It wasn’t regret as much as… embarrassment.  The werewolf had to smile.  “So, you lost your virginity in California, huh?”

Dean looked mortified.  “No.  I mean, ye…. I mean,” he stammered.  His face burned crimson.  “How in the Hell could you possibly know that?”

The werewolf shrugged.  “It’s a gift,” he smiled.  “And don’t get defensive.  Fifteen is a perfectly reasonable age for that… or for a girlfriend.  That was when I had my first one, too—relationship, that is.”

When Dean hesitated to speak again, Derek feared he had overstepped.  “I didn’t mean to pry,” he apologized.  “Or presume.  Was it a girlfriend?”

Once upon a time, Dean might have taken offense or found the insinuation funny.  Instead, he just nodded.  “You’re fine,” he assured him.  “And yeah.  Her name was Maggie.  Sort of lost in thought there.  She was a few years older than me… a senior, I think.  She was just using me to get back at her boyfriend—to embarrass him—for cheating on her.  I was just a means to an end.”

The pathos was almost palpable as it radiated from the older man, and Derek felt the need to comfort him and lessen the blow somehow.  To do so, he revealed something he once never would have.  “I understand.  My first girlfriend was Paige, but she died.  When she did, I eventually found my way into the bed of an older woman myself.  Kate, she… used me, too.” He wished it had been for something so simple as revenge for a spurned lover rather than the nefarious truth.

After what seemed like an eternity of awkward silence, Dean couldn’t stand it any longer.  “So, you learned to cook from watching your Dad?” he asked, trying to change the subject.  When the other man nodded, he had a follow-up question.  “Could he bake?”

Derek shook his head, but after a moment, he changed it to a half-hearted shrug.  “I’m not sure, actually.  My mother was the one who did the baking… birthday cakes and all that.  She wasn’t exactly the stay-at-home domestic type, but she was the one who did the bake sale cupcakes and brownies.  At Christmas time, she made fudge and cookies.  Some of my favorite holiday memories were of her apron covered with flour and the smell of vanilla and ginger and nutmeg.”

Unable to resist, Dean reached into the flour cannister that the other man had put on the table, and grabbing a handful of powder, he flung it at “Cam”.  It was a tension-breaker, but it made a far bigger mess than he anticipated, covering everything from brows to knees, including the prematurely salt-and-pepper beard that still managed to look good.  He almost regretted it— _almost_.  “Guess you should have borrowed her apron, Santa.”

Reaching up to wipe the flour from his eyes, Derek stared at Dean incredulously.  “Really?”

“Yup,” Dean beamed.

Derek reached for the towel on the table, but at the last second, he changed his target, grabbing a handful of flour and throwing it in the older man’s direction.  The powder practically detonated, exploding into a cloud that one-upped the previous display, coating Dean from hair to boots like some ghost reject that Scooby and the gang would have pursued.

It was a far more relaxed behavior than Dean had expected, but if “Cam” could give as good as he got, then he could follow suit.  Over the next few minutes, the kitchen became a war zone.  Each throwing flour until there was no more to be had, at which point, sugar became the weapon of choice.  The small crystals packed a slight sting on impact, but only to the point of being noticeable rather than dangerous, as both had picked up on the timing well enough to avert their eyes.  After that came various spices neither stopped to identify.

When all ammunition had been exhausted, both men were chortling uproariously, surprisingly out of breath as the result of a surprising amount of exertion.  Dean was panting, struggling to breathe through a combination of hysteria and transient fatigue.  Surveying the mess only made him laugh that much harder, but finally, he managed to eek out, “So what do we do now?  We can’t exactly scoop this stuff off the floor to make pies which, I should remind you, we don’t actually know how to make anyway.”

Derek grinned.  “Mrs. Lucy has plenty of stuff in the pantry to replace… _this_.  Why don’t we start by getting out of these clothes?”

“Hey, now,” Dean smirked.  “I’ve been the one paying for dinner.  If anyone’s putting out….”

Derek rolled his eyes, trying to hide his amusement.  “If we stay in what we’re wearing, we’re only going to make the mess bigger.  I _meant_ you could take a shower while I throw your clothes in the wash, then I’ll clean up all of this and get changed myself.”

“I helped make the mess, I’ll help clean it up,” Dean insisted.

The werewolf shook his head.  “I appreciate the offer, but honestly, it’ll go faster if I do it myself.” That much was true.  Peeling off his shirt, Derek’s bare chest was one of the few spots on his body not covered in flour.  Turning, he walked down the hall towards his room to grab a change of clothes himself.  “Last door on the right.  Towels and stuff are under the sink.”

As Dean stared appraisingly at the other man’s physique while he moved away, he was intrigued by the tattoo between his shoulder blades.  His interest, he told himself, was little more than curiosity, but it was probably a good thing the smell of cinnamon overpowered anything else heightened senses might otherwise detect.

 

Dean stood under the spray of water longer than was probably absolutely necessary, but he couldn’t help himself.  As much as the Bunker was a step up from the endless parade of motels that he and Sam had _called_ “home” for the bulk of their lives, this place was a step up from that.  It was an actual home.  Besides, every time he tried to get down to business and finish cleaning up, he got distracted.  He realized that it wasn’t just this place; it was these people.  Ashley, Mrs. Lucy, and most of all, the man who’d coated him in flour.    He just didn’t understand why “Cam” occupied his thoughts so completely.

Finally turning off the faucet, Dean grabbed a towel and began to dry himself off.  Seeing the anti-possession warding over his collarbone, his mind drifted back to the triskelia tattoo he’d seen on the other man.  He hadn’t recognized what it was immediately, instead fixated on the undulating movements of the broad back adorned by it.  He’d realized that “Cam” was muscular on their first meeting, but it was much more evident when he saw him without the shirt.  It was an image that lingered in his brain, like the afterimages left behind by a bright light.

“Dean?” Derek called, knocking on the door.

It caught the hunter off-guard, and he knocked a few items from the sink onto the floor below.  “Yeah,” he answered simply.  “Sorry, making a mess in here.”

Derek couldn’t smell anything over the scents of soap and shampoo, but he could hear the accelerated heart rate.  He’d obviously surprised the other man.  “Don’t worry about it.  I finished up in the kitchen, and I was just checking to see if you needed anything.”

Dean could see the shadow under the door, and he felt his heart racing.  He could hear it— _feel it_ —pounding in his ears.   He needed to get a grip on himself.  He shouldn’t have been that startled.  “Fine,” he assured him.  “Be out in a minute.”

“Take your time,” Derek told him.  “The kitchen’s cleaned up, so I’m going to go grab a shower myself now.  I won’t be long.”

Dean couldn’t help but wonder why his pulse was quickening again.  Ignoring the question nagging at the back of his mind, he stuck his face under the spray and let his thoughts wash away with the water.

 

When Dean finally left the bathroom, “Cam” was still in his own shower.  With nothing but a towel wrapped around his waist, he felt a little exposed and strangely self-conscious.  He actually longed for the days when he and Sam were motel aficionados with all their clothes readily available in the trunk.  The cotton barrier that currently shielded his modesty felt inadequate as he stood in the middle of this strange house with this curious and captivating stranger.  He tried to distract himself by wandering around the rooms to take in his surroundings.

Mrs. Lucy was from an older generation, and for some reason, Dean expected the home to be kitschy and filled with tchotchkes to some excessively garish degree.  It surprisingly was neither.  Instead, it was more of a vintage throwback, reminding him of an episode of “Mad Men”.  That thought gave him pause.  When the Hell had he watched an episode of “Mad Men”?  He really needed to start sleeping through the night before the bootlegged cable programs filled what precious little real estate remained in his head.

After a while, Dean started yawning, suddenly cognizant of just how many hours he had now been awake.  Not the first time, by any means, but even when hunting with his brother, he could usually grab a power nap for a few minutes.  Relaxed from his shower and feeling the exhaustion creep into his bones and joints, he walked back into the living room and sat on the couch.  He just needed to shut his eyes… just for a second.

 

When Derek got out of the shower, he went to grab a fresh change of clothes when he remembered that he’d grabbed his last clean shirt and pair of pants, both of which now stunk and were covered with kitchen detritus after cleaning up his and Dean’s impromptu battle.  Wrapping a towel around his waist, he started down the hallway with the intent of grabbing some of Mr. Phillips’ sweats.  Mrs. Lucy still had a few of his clothes saved to cut for cleaning cloths but had offered them to Derek should he need them.

Before he reached her room, though, he noticed Dean’s clothes were still in the bathroom as he passed.  Shaking his head, he walked in and grabbed them, carrying them to the laundry room.  He noticed the other man fast asleep on the couch about the time that the sound of the even, steady breathing reached his ears.  With a wry smile, he continued with his task.

 When he reached the laundry room, he noticed that he still had some clothes in the washing machine.  Though still damp, they still smelled only of detergent, so he threw them into the dryer, starting it as he threw the rest of his hamper into the wash, along with Dean’s clothes.

Walking back into the living room, he gently took a seat on the couch next to Dean.  The overstuffed throw pillows on each end (one of which currently had Dean’s face buried in it) afforded the same amount of sitting area as a loveseat, so he was a lot closer to the other man than he probably should have been.  Strangely, though, he didn’t seem to mind.

Grabbing the blanket off the back of the couch, he spread it out over the older man.  He didn’t bother doing so for himself, more than warm enough, as was so oft the case.  He didn’t really want to try making a pie in earnest for the first time wearing nothing but a towel, so he leaned his head back and dozed off.

After a half-hour or so, Derek opened his senses to see if either machine was done.  Hearing both gently tumbling, he started to move to get more comfortable to continue his nap as he could still hear Dean doing the same.  That was when his mind caught up with his surroundings, realizing that he could _not_ move without dislodging the man currently using his shoulder as his new pillow.

It was a reflexive position change, undoubtedly, and Derek couldn’t bring himself to wake Dean.  It was in no small part that he didn’t want to embarrass the other man.  He didn’t know what occupied Dean’s dreams, but he could see the effects they were having, as the blanket was tented over his lap by what could also be described as “no small part”.  He could smell the arousal, but for whatever reason, the older man’s scent was actually… _pleasing?_   Content enough with the current situation, he opted to let things pass naturally.  With any luck, Dean’s sleeping thoughts would subside with their results before he was any the wiser.

 

Dean wasn’t so lucky.  Some time after Derek drifted off to sleep, the hunter woke to something tickling his nose.  That something was the hair between the pecs of the man next to him.  Straightening with a start, he wiped his mouth.  He couldn’t decide which mortified him more—falling asleep on the younger man’s shoulder, nuzzling his chest, or drooling on both.  There was no way to clean it up without waking him, so there was no way to salvage his dignity.

Speaking of dignity, that was clearly out the window when he realized the problem that he was having in his groin right now.  It was a _big_ problem.  He didn’t know how to fix any of this, but the elephant in the room needed to go away, and fast.  Why wasn’t “Cam” wearing any clothes?  Why didn’t that bother him?  Why did it not only not bother him, but he why he couldn’t help but admire the man’s aesthetics?  Every line seemed sculpted perfectly for form and function, like his body was designed to do more than a body should.

Okay, this was not helping.  He needed to get laid.  He needed a cold shower—an ice-cold shower.  He needed all those things, but he needed to be able to stand up without requiring an R-rating.  Staring up at the ceiling, he started thinking about puppies… dead puppies… puppies being eating by ghouls… being eaten by undead puppies.  He literally thought of everything he could muster to his brain in hopes of making it go away.  Instead, thoughts of eating turned to pie.  Eating pie turned to Jimbo’s.  Jimbo’s turned to “Cam”.  “Cam” turned to mostly naked “Cam”… sitting next to him… sitting inches away from him.

He literally had to _stop_ thinking.  He emptied his head until only his family settled in.  He thought of Sam.  He thought of Mary.  He thought of John.  Bobby.  Cas.  Jack.  Finally, he looked down and breathed a sigh of relief.  He apparently breathed that sigh of relief a little heavily.  He could see “Cam” stirring awake.  Quickly, he grabbed a handful of the blanket and wiped away the saliva that had dribbled from his mouth.

When “Cam” opened his eyes, Dean smirked.  “You were drooling.  It was gross.  I got it,” he smiled proudly, lying through his teeth.

As if the upticks wouldn’t have told him as much, Derek could smell the difference.  Dean had obviously drooled on him.  “Uh-huh,” Derek smirked mockingly.  Somehow, he couldn’t bring himself to mind.  “I don’t hear the laundry.  You forgot to throw your stuff in the wash, but I did before I fell asleep.  I’ve got some stuff in the dryer.  I’ll go grab us something to wear.”

Derek got up to go grab some clean clothes.  As he walked away, Dean watched him.  He wanted to say he was looking at the tattoo, but his eyes had drifted lower.  He needed to wake up before “Cam” thought he was checking out his ass, because that was just crazy… wasn’t it?

When “Cam” returned, he was wearing a pair of jeans and a Henley that stretched across his broad chest with the sleeves pushed up.  Stretched impossibly so, in Dean’s opinion.  He didn’t get to dwell on it long, though, before a tee and a pair of pants hit him squarely in the face.  “Put those on,” Derek told him.  Dean did so obediently, hopping into the jeans before letting the towel fall away.  Pulling the shirt over his head, he didn’t notice eyes taking in his form.  Derek couldn’t help but marvel at the shape the man was in.  He certainly looked nowhere close to his age, and the tattoo on his collar intrigued the werewolf.

“Sorry,” Derek offered.  “The whites weren’t clean, so I’m afraid you’re stuck going commando until your own stuff is done.  Kind of in the same boat myself.”

Dean really wished he hadn’t said that.  He honestly hadn’t thought about it.  He probably should have, since he just pulled on another man’s fatigues, but he was distracted.  He was far more distracted now, as he could feel his body pressed involuntarily against the denim that thankfully confined him.  “So, should we get started on this pie thing?” he suggested, silently adding, _for the love of Chuck, please!_

 

“What the Hell is the difference between apple, Dutch apple, apple crumb, and apple streusel?” Dean asked, perusing the cookbook.

Derek smiled.  “Skill level, mostly.  Streusel is the type of topping, and it’s usually on a crumble or a crisp.  That recipe is mislabeled.  It’s technically an apple crumble.  There’s also buckles and Bettys,” he chuckled.  “Streusel, thankfully, doesn’t need to look nearly as pretty as one of Mrs. Lucy’s creations, which makes it seem like the perfect choice for you and me to try to tackle.”

Shrugging, Dean couldn’t help but agree.  “So, what do I need to do?”

Handing the measuring cups and spoons over, he pointed to the food processor.  “Start with a third cup of the sugar.” Dean cocked an eyebrow.  He was staring at granulated sugar, brown sugar, and powdered sugar.  Before he could ask, “Cam” answered his unspoken question.  “Granulated, though add a fourth-cup of brown sugar to it, packed tightly.”

Glancing at the recipe, which “Cam” clearly had committed to memory, Dean’s face scrunched in curiosity.  “What’s the difference between light and dark brown sugar?”

“The amount of molasses in it,” Derek grinned.  He remembered asking his parents such questions during his own childhood… a childhood that Dean had missed out on.  “Add a half-cup and two tablespoons of flour—regular, not cake flour—a teaspoon of cinnamon, a half-teaspoon of ginger, and a half-teaspoon of salt.”

“Whoa, there, Speedy Gonzales,” Dean protested.  Amused, Derek shook his head and handed him one item after the next, taking a break from slicing the apples.  “Now what?”

Pointing to one of the buttons, Derek walked over to the fridge while Dean mixed the dry ingredients, grabbing a cold stick of butter.  “Cut that into small pieces and pulse it until it’s incorporated, and the mixture is crumbly.  Don’t over process it.  If you make it too smooth and well-combined, it won’t bake right.”

“How will I know when to stop?” the hunter asked.

“If you make a paste, you’ve gone too far,” Derek chuckled.

Dean intently stared at the food processor’s contents, and when he decided he had reached the right consistently, he looked up, smiling proudly.  His satisfaction in his efforts were short-lived when he realized that “Cam” had finished slicing the apples, made a filling, and deposited it into the shell he’d undoubtedly made while he cleaned the kitchen.

“Don’t be too impressed,” Derek told him.  “Mrs. Lucy pre-bakes a several extra shells ahead of time.  That was one she had in the freezer that I set out earlier.”

Dean raised a querying eyebrow.  “Are you a mind-reader?”

Derek shook his head, amused.  “Hardly, but you looked like a kid who’d just drawn a stick figure family, turned it into the teacher, impressed with himself, and then saw the next kid hand in the Mona Lisa.”

“Are you calling my amazing streusel topping a stick figure family?” the hunter asked, trying to sound indignant.  He couldn’t hold the expression long, though, and he started laughing uproariously.

Derek just rolled his eyes, finished putting everything together, placing it on the baking sheet, and putting it into the oven.  “Now we cook that for twenty minutes before we put the topping on.  Then another forty-five minutes or so.”

“Then what?  We eat it?” Dean asked hopefully.

“Yes,” Derek nodded.  “We need to make sure it turned out okay.  If it doesn’t, we try again.”

“And if it does?”

“Then we do it again,” Derek answered.

Dean felt stupid.  “Oh, right.  For the diner.  How many do we need to make, anyway?”

Derek glanced up at him, wanting to see the reaction.  “Mrs. Lucy always makes at least ten.”

Dean’s face fell.  “Are you trying to make me hate pie, you bastard?”

“Ready for that beer now?” Derek asked in amusement.

“Got anything stronger?  I have a feeling I’m going to need it,” the hunter told “Cam” truthfully.

 

Six hours, ten successful, and three unsuccessful pies later, they were done.  “You don’t have to come with me to take these to the diner,” Derek offered.  “You’ve done enough… more than enough.”

“Are you cooking?” Dean asked.

“Of course,” Derek replied, his brow furrowed in consternation at an otherwise inane question.

Dean smiled.  “Then I’m coming.  You’ve seen my baking skills.  My cooking skills are worse.  It’s either your food, or I’m hitting another diner on the way home.  Besides, I figure I’ve at least earned a free meal.”

Derek snorted.  “Who said all that?” he teased.

Dean reached towards the flour jar, and Derek’s eyes narrowed in challenge.  The hunter started laughing.  “Let me just go grab my clothes out of the dryer.  You might actually want these back,” he told “Cam”, honestly barely remembering what he was wearing was not his own.

“Probably a good idea,” Derek admitted, though a part of him was strangely bothered by the notion.  His lupine nature had almost preened while Dean was walking around in his clothes.  He hadn’t really thought about it until this very moment.  It was like a primal instinct that was something of an evolutionary throwback, like his wolf providing for a mate.  It made little sense, so Derek didn’t dwell on it.

Still, when Dean returned from the laundry room, Derek couldn’t help but feel a little bit disappointed for reasons he couldn’t quite put his finger on.  Shaking it off, he and Dean were soon on the road towards Jimbo’s.

 

With all the driving the day before, not to mention the miles from the bunker, Dean had to stop and fill up Baby’s tank.  Derek drove on ahead to the diner, going in through the back to unload the precious cargo that he and Dean had created.  Once he had them in the display case—admittedly, hours later than normal—he moved to the grill and took over after a quick exchange with Glenn.

Glancing at the time, the werewolf knew Ashley would be in soon (assuming she was coming, after everything with her mother).  If not, Ramona would be covering, or, failing that, he could ask Dean for help.  He told Susie to go ahead, so that she and her husband could head home.

When Dean arrived a few minutes later, he walked into the diner, expecting to see the usual crowd.  He didn’t, or rather, he did… along with another familiar face, unfamiliar in these surroundings.  “What are you doing here?” the hunter asked, genuinely curious.

“What am I doing here?” Sam asked.  “You’ve been gone for a day and a half, and you wouldn’t answer your phone.  I thought you were in trouble.”

The look on the younger Winchester’s face spoke volumes.  He was worried, and in Winchester-speak, worry sounded a lot like anger.  Dean hadn’t meant to elicit that response, so he fought the urge to make matters worse and tried to defuse the situation.  “Sorry, Sammy, a lot’s been going on, and I just lost track of the time.  Didn’t mean to scare you.”

The towering brother wasn’t satisfied with that response, not by a long shot.  “Then why the Hell didn’t you pick up the phone and tell me that?”

Dean sighed.  Sam was right, and he told him so.  “You’re right.  I haven’t had my clothes on for most of the day, and when I took my pants off, I left my phone by the sink.  When I picked it up, it was dead.  I started charging it in the car, but I haven’t powered it on to check my messages.”

“When you _took your pants off_?” Sam asked incredulously.

The elder brother realized how his words sounded.  “It wasn’t like that, Sammy,” he began.  About that time, Ashley came in.  She smiled broadly at Dean, rushing over to plant a kiss on his cheek.  “Thanks for last night… and this morning.”

As she walked back to the kitchen to grab her apron, Sam was glowering.  “I can see what it was like, Dean!”

The whole exchange was going from bad to worse, and Dean was trying his best to defuse it.  He was having trouble, however, summoning the right words to get his brother to listen to his explanation.  What complicated matters was Derek coming to the front of the restaurant, no doubt hearing the heated argument.  “We got a problem here?” the werewolf asked the hunter who had four to five inches on him.

“Back off!” Sam barked.  “This is between me and him!”

The chemo-signals were antagonizing the situation for Derek, but that was hard from all.  There was something territorial… possessive in the way that this man’s volume caused a posturing.  “I think it’s time you go,” Derek told Sam, grabbing him by the arm.

When he did, Sam jerked his arm away and took a swing.  Thanks to preternatural reflexes, Derek went below the impressive reach with breakneck speed, coming up to plant a fierce—albeit restrained—blow onto the chin of the giant hunter, sending him spiraling onto the floor.

When Ashley screamed, Dean was half tempted to grab the gun from his waist and fire a shot.  Instead, he shouted at the top of his lungs, his deep voice echoing.  “Everyone, calm the Hell down!” He stepped in between the two “combatants”.  Reaching down, he extended a hand to Sam, who, after a moment of deliberation, took it, allowing Dean to pull him to his feet.  “You, shut up and let me talk.”

“And you,” he told Derek, “can you _not_ hit my brother?”

And just like that, Derek almost shrank with embarrassment.  “ _Brother_?” he repeated.  “I’m sorry.  I didn’t know… I didn’t _mean_ ….”

Dean smiled sympathetically.  “It’s fine.  I’ve hit him a lot harder than that,” he chuckled, turning back to his brother.  “And he’s being an ass.”

When Sam opened his mouth to protest, the elder Winchester silenced him with a glare.  Glancing back at the cook, he said simply, “ _Omakase_ times two?” Derek nodded and headed towards the grill.  Dean smiled at Ashley.  “Coffee?”

Hesitantly, the waitress went to the pot while Dean pointed to the booth, his unspoken command moving is brother to take a seat.  “First off, I’m sorry for not checking in.  I know with everything that’s happened over the last few months, you were worried.  That’s on me, but if you’re done making an ass out of yourself, I’d like to tell you about this place… about these people….”

 

After twenty minutes, Dean was done talking, and Sam did, indeed, feel like an ass.  Derek was also done cooking.  He started to tell Ashley order up, but as she was still eyeing Dean’s brother cautiously, he took the plates over to the table.  Sam stood, and extended a hand.  “I’m sorry,” he offered.  “I nearly lost Dean recently, so even though he’s the big brother, I tend to worry about him.  That’s no excuse for how I acted, though, and if we could, I’d like to start over.  I’m Sam.  Sam Campbell.”

Derek listened, and when Sam mentioned nearly losing Dean and being worried, it matched up with what he could smell coming from the man.  He didn’t know circumstances, but he could understand the sentiment, and his glance towards the elder hunter said they would be discussing this later.  “Apology accepted,” the werewolf began, “if you’ll accept mine for the punch.  He’s talked about you before, and I should have put two and two together.  I acted without thinking.  I’m Camden Lahey.  Call me Cam.”

“Story of his life,” Sam grinned.  “No wonder you two get along.”

Derek glanced over at Ashley with a nod, and the young woman seemed to be relaxed now that things were less volatile.  “You guys take your time.  Let me know if you need anything,” he told them before going to start on the next orders.

When Ashley came over to refill their coffees, Dean touched her hand gently, “How’s your Mom?” She nodded.  “Good.  She’s home now, so I feel a lot better, about that at least.  I wish we could say the same for Mrs. Lucy.”

“She’ll be back before you know it,” Dean smiled.  “That is one tough old bird.”

The waitress’ eyes were welling with tears, and she reached up to dry them before they started to fall.  “She is the toughest,” she agreed.  “You and Cam going to keep filling in for her on the pie front?”

Dean shrugged.  “If he wants me to.  I’m not sure how much help I was, but it was actually kind of fun.  I’ve eaten pie my entire life.  First time I’ve ever made one.”

“You want me to cut you a slice to go with that?” she asked, pointing to the chicken-fried steaks, potatoes, and gravy.  The hunter was quick to shake his head.  “For me?  Absolutely not.  The thought of even looking at an apple anything right now makes me nauseous.  He’ll take one, but I’ll get it.  You go do what you need to do.”

Sam shook his head.  “None for me,” he smiled apologetically.

Dean snorted.  “Oh, no.  If I _made_ pie, you’re _eating_ pie.  That’s all there is to it,” he told his brother adamantly.  He grinned at Ashley.  “How’s Charlie?”

“He’s good,” she shrugged.  “He’s glad to have grandma and grandpa home, but I didn’t want to put too much stress on them tonight.”

“Ramona keeping him?” Dean asked.

She nodded in the affirmative.  “Oh!  She passed her exam… with an A, no less.”

Dean nodded back.  “That’s fantastic.  I’ll have to congratulate her next time I see her,” he remarked.  “Hey, her asshole brother hasn’t been giving you any trouble, has he?”

She shook her head.  “Between you and Cam, I don’t expect any problems out of him for a while.  Besides, he can’t really afford to keep posting bail.”

“Walt hit him with the bill for a night in the drunk tank?” Dean chuckled.

“That’s the least he deserves,” she laughed.  “Oops, let me go get this table.  Let me know if you want me to get that pie for you.”

Dean shook his head.  “I know where it is.  I’ll get it.  Don’t worry about us.” As the waitress left, the elder Winchester found his brother staring at him, dumbfounded.  “What?”

“Who are you, and what have you done with my brother?” Sam asked.  “This is more connections than I’ve seen you make with everyone we’ve ever met… all of them… over our entire lives… put together.  You know more about these people than you know about anyone other than me, and even then, I’m not so sure.”

Sam’s humorous attempt at hyperbole was about to summon forth a smartass remark, as was the tried and true Winchester way, but a sound from the kitchen cut him off.  Cam’s voice was raised.  “How did you get this number?”

Ashley started for the kitchen, but Dean’s expression told her that he would handle it.  He similarly told Sam to stay put without uttering a single syllable.  He walked over to Cam, staying a few feet away as not to intrude.  “It’s not safe for you to call me,” he told the person on the other end.  “It’s not safe for any of you.  Worry less about me and more about keeping Scott off the radar… like I’m trying to be.  Don’t bother with this number again.”

Powering the phone off, Derek dropped it to the floor before stomping on it.  The pieces shattered beneath his heel, and clearly frustrated, he kicked them into the corner.  As he directed his attention towards the grill with a fervor, Dean stepped forward.  “Are you okay?” he asked in a low voice.

“I’m fine,” Derek responded in an equally low voice.

“Who was that?” Dean asked.  “Who’s Scott?”

Derek turned towards him with a heated intensity.  “I said I’m _fine_!”

Dean held up his hands defensively.  “I just wanted….”

“Leave it _alone_!” Derek growled, slamming the spatula down and walking outside to clear his head.  Dean just stood there, not entirely sure what he should do about it, if anything.  After a few moments, Sam joined him.  He stared at his older brother, then at the exit that the cook had gone through, and then back again.  His face contorted into a non-verbal question.

Finally, Dean decided the Hell with it, and followed Derek outside.  Sam looked down at the broken phone before kneeling to grab the SIM card.  Pocketing it, he went back to his seat.

 

When Dean found “Cam” outside, the younger man was inhaling sharply, on the border of seething.  It was anger, but it was an anger born of frustration and worry.  Dean had seen something very similar inside the dinner less than an hour ago.  Derek shot a look at him, daring him to say something.  Instead, Dean gave him a smile and took a seat on the ground, leaning his back against the brick wall of the back of the building.

“You expect me to talk?” Derek asked him.

Dean shook his head.  “At the supreme sacrifice of avoiding the Bond reference, nope.  I’m just here.  You want to talk?  I’m here.  You want to sit?  Also here.  You want to storm around and break more stuff?  Still here.”

That seemed to rob the werewolf of his anger.  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re a colossal pain in the ass?”

Dean smiled.  “All the time.  Especially that monstrosity in there.  He’s been saying it for three decades.”

Derek snorted.  “Three decades?  I’ve barely been alive three decades.  You’re old.”

Humor was an unexpected response, but it was far better than anger.  “I look good for my age.”

“No argument here,” Derek said, almost reflexively, both surprising him and causing him to regret it.  “I hope I look as good when I’m that damned ancient.”

The attempt at turning the compliment into something backhanded was weak, and they both knew it.  Dean, however, didn’t push.  He just sat there, letting the words hang in the air, making things that much tenser.

Sighing, Derek walked over and took a seat next the other man.  “Old friend.  Trying to avoid my past, and he’s not content to leave well enough alone.”

Dean nodded.  “I can relate… also with that monstrosity in there.  Sounds less like a friend and more like family.”

“Yeah.  I guess that kind of fits,” Derek acknowledged.  “Kind of like that pain in the ass little brother you have to look out for who thinks it’s his job to look out for you instead.”

Dean snorted in derision.  “Gee, I wouldn’t know _anything_ about that… or avoiding your past.  That’s been my go-to for more years than I can count.”

Derek glanced at him.  “I’m not surprised,” he deadpanned, finally cracking a smile when he added, “after all, they say the mind is the first thing to go.”

Dean shoved him in the shoulder, and Derek playfully teetered to one side.  “Thanks,” Derek told him.  The hunter cocked an eyebrow.  “For what?”

“For not making me talk about it,” Derek answered.  “That’s not exactly my usual way of dealing with things.  Far better than I used to be, but I’d still call myself a work in progress.”

Dean held out his hand.  “Nice to meet you, Pot.  I’m Kettle.  Black, you say?”

“You’re an idiot,” Derek chuckled.

Dean shrugged.  “It’s been said… mostly by that monstrosity in there,” he said, Derek echoing the words in unison as they finished the sentence together.

 

When they walked back inside, Sam had finished his food.  Ashley had brought him the slice of pie he’d previously refused.  When Dean joined him, his brother had a smirk on his face.  “What?”

“The pie… it’s delicious,” Sam told him.

Dean tried to look indignant, but the pride was written all over his face.  “You don’t have to look so surprised.”

The younger Winchester glanced towards the kitchen to “Cam”, who was now back at his station before the grill.  “Surprised?” he repeated.  “Yeah, but pleasantly so.  You seem to have found something that works for you.  It might be unexpected, but if it makes you happy, who am I to knock it?”

Dean stared at his brother in confusion.  “Dude, it’s a pie.  Stop getting so damned philosophical about food.”

Sam reached into his pocket and fished out enough bills to cover the food for the both of them, along with a generous tip.  Walking over to the kitchen, he called out to “Cam”.  “The food was delicious.  Thanks, and sorry again.”

Derek looked behind him at the younger hunter.  He nodded with a smile, “Glad to hear it, and no problem.  It was nice to meet you, Sam.”

Sam walked over to Dean and took another drink from his glass of ice water.  “I’m headed back to the bunker.  Nothing major going on right now, so take all the time you want… just keep your phone charged.”

“Will do,” Dean promised, though he remained perplexed by his brother’s behavior.  He was convinced Sam thought he was privy to some inside joke that Dean remained oblivious to.

 

As the hours passed and the night stretched on, Dean found himself strangely invigorated.  Something about being here with these people and having his brother here earlier felt somehow _right_.  It was like the two most important parts of his life had been brought together.  He sat there, exchanging pleasantries with the regulars—who had come to call him by name—and smiles with Ashley… and “Cam”.

The place hit an atypical lull and was virtually empty just a short while before the night shift ended.  Derek told Ashley to go on home and check on her mother and son.  He could handle things from there, and if he didn’t, he had Dean, he assured her.

Dean nodded in affirmation, and as they started wrapping up the cleaning and prep work for the night, the hunter was curious.  “So what kind of pie are we making today?”

Derek shrugged with a grin.  “I honestly have no clue.  I was so worried about getting through the first day that I gave no thought to what came next.” He said nothing immediately after, but when Dean interject, Derek bit his lower lip in hesitation.  “You sure you don’t mind helping?”

“Not at all,” Dean assured him.  “For years, Sammy and I were the only ones in the family business.  Now we’ve got a whole lot of new folks carrying the torch, so taking it easy is something of a luxury I never really imagined.”

Derek laughed.  “And slaving in the kitchen for hours is your idea of taking it easy?” he asked, and Dean thought his words were misconstrued.  Derek just shook them off.  “If you’re up to it, I’d be glad for the company.”

“I should probably go grab my phone from the car, then, and tell Sammy to bring me a change of clothes.  You’re going to get tired of smelling me after a while,” the older man chuckled.

Derek rolled his eyes.  “Go call your brother… or text him, it’s early,” he told Dean.  What he _didn’t_ tell him was that he was pretty sure he would never grow tired of the scent.  It was pleasing, comfortable, and reassuring to a degree that even family failed to match.  He’d never experienced anything quite like it.

Dean went out to grab his phone, and Derek went out the back to drop the trash into the dumpster.  He barely caught an entirely different scent over the odor of the refuse.  Omegas, at least four of them, were circling around him.  Were they here by design or by accident?  He couldn’t take the chance that it was the former, and as much as he didn’t want to expose the truth to Dean, he might not have a choice.

Willing the beginnings of a partial shift to the surface, Derek was ready to go on the offensive.  He didn’t get the chance, however, as two shots rang out in rapid succession, quickly followed by two more.  The blue in his eyes receded, and as the near-feral werewolves fled, he looked to see Dean with a determined look of both menace and malice on his face.  The gun in his hand was held with a practiced ease he’d seen in few others… all of whom shared one important distinction.

“You okay?” Dean asked.

Derek nodded.  “Yeah.  You?”

Dean, himself, nodded in return.  “I saw those guys skulking around back.  I figured they were about to make trouble.”

“Good thing they never got the chance,” Derek said honestly.  Not entirely certain how to respond to what just happened, he opted for, “I should probably call Walt.”

Dean nodded.  “My phone’s still dead.  I think the charger cable is frayed.  I should probably go get one before I have my brother worried again.  You okay if I head home to grab a change of clothes with it?  I can meet you at Mrs. Lucy’s.”,

“I’m good,” Derek smiled.  “Glenn and Susie should be along any minute, and with the regulars that normally come in within the next hour, I don’t think there’s anything else to worry about, especially once Walt starts poking around.”

“See you in a few hours, then,” Dean smiled.  Once “Cam” was back inside, he started surveying the scene.  What the Hell was a pack of werewolves doing sniffing around Jimbo’s?  Had they followed him here?  Were they trying to find the bunker?

 

Once Derek saw Dean finally leave, he waited for his relief.  Heading to the truck stop down the road, he bought one of the inexpensive pay-as-you-go phones.  Dialing the number from memory, he waited for an answer.  “Chris.  It’s Derek.  I need to know if you can tell me anything about a couple of possible hunters—a pair of good-looking brothers going by the name Dean and Sam Campbell….”

 

When Dean arrived at the bunker, he found his brother staring intently at a computer screen.  “I just tried to call you,” Sam told him.  The expression on his face suggested the elder Winchester brother wasn’t going to like where this conversation was headed.  “Phone’s still dead.  I came home to grab another charger.”

“How much do you know about Cam?” Sam asked him.

Dean could feel the anger riling in his gut.  “Pretty much just what I told you.  What’s this all about, Sammy?”

The younger hunter turned the display towards him.  “Camden Lahey died in Afghanistan.  He’s been dead for more than ten years, so his basic information is publicly accessible.”

“What the Hell?  I’m sure there’s more than one Camden Lahey,” Dean barked.

“I considered that.  None, though, that match the age of the guy at Jimbo’s,” Sam told him, punching up another webpage.  “But then there’s this.”

Dean glared at it blankly.  “It’s a call log.  So what?”

“I grabbed his SIM card off the floor.  The phone call that bothered him so much last night?  I did a reverse directory search.  That’s the hit that came back.”

Dean clicked on the link.  “What the Hell is that?” he asked.

“It’s Polish,” Sam replied.

“Like that douche that was you in that other universe with the TV show about us?” he asked, amused.

Sam, clearly, was not.  “Mieczyslaw Stilinski.  Bachelor of Arts with a triple major in Intelligence Analysis, Collection, and Operations.  Top of his class at George Washington University.  Master’s in Crime Scene Investigation.  Again, top of his class at George Washington University.  FBI.  Special Agent with the FBI.”

Dean stared, processing every word.  What in the Hell had he stumbled into?  “So, what?  Cam—or whatever his name is—is a CI?  Witness protection?  What?”

“Your guess is as good as mine as to what he is now,” Sam admitted.  “I plugged his description into the database, and it came back positive for a cold case back in 2013.  He came back as an unsub in a serial murder investigation.  Though his name wasn’t Camden Lahey… it was Derek Hale.”

Sam pulled up an image that showed “Cam” running through the woods—and though the face wasn’t 100% clear in the photograph, the triskele between his shoulder blades was.  Dean knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was Cam… Derek… whatever.  Cam—Derek—had lied to him.  Of course, he’d lied to him as well, but that did nothing to assuage his feelings of anger… or his feelings of being hurt.

“What’s your point?” Dean all but spat.

Sam was far calmer, more in control.  “My point is, what, exactly, do you really know about this guy?”

Dean slammed the laptop shut.  “Well, if an FBI agent is _calling_ him, clearly, they ruled him out as a suspect.”

“I never said anything to the contrary,” the younger Winchester agreed.  “This guy’s lying to you, and he may have a perfectly good reason for doing so.  I don’t exactly want to throw stones from our glass house   I just want you to know exactly what you’re caught up in.  I want you to be careful.”

The elder of the pair was responding with a predictable display of anger, storming out of the room with parting words.  “I’m a grown-ass man.  I can take care of myself,” he spat.  “Why the Hell do you care anyway?”

Sam watched his brother leave.  Quietly, he answered.  “Because you care about him, and I don’t want you to get hurt.”

 

Dean was fuming in his room.  Shouting “SON OF A BITCH!” before planting a fist into his wall so hard that he could both hear and feel the bone crack.  Broken knuckles and a stream of blood, he was livid.  At Sam, sure, but mostly at himself.  He’d trusted the guy.  He was so busy being on the defensive that he hadn’t even had time to mention the presence of the werewolves at the diner.

Trying to calm himself, the ire finally faded, giving way to curiosity.  Dean walked to the kitchen and grabbed some ice.  After rinsing off his swollen hand, he wrapped it and walked to the library.  The laptop was still sitting where he left it, but Sam was nowhere to be found.  The hunter knew exactly what this was.  His brother was giving him space to handle things his way.

Taking a seat, he opened the computer.  Struggling with his now noncompliant fingers, he entered his query into the search engine.  He read the headlines, but he wanted to know more of the story.  He wasn’t on Sam’s level, but his hacking ability was enough.  “Beacon Hills Fire Department Field Incident Report” answered his summons.

He read the keywords.  He cross-referenced the coroner’s report.  The expected “fire/smoke inhalation” appeared alongside something that chilled him to the bone.  “Eight Family Members Deceased.” Under the heading “Probable Cause of Death”?  _Electrical Malfunction: Possible Arson_.

He pulled up a far more recent article, showing a face he dimly recognized from a lifetime ago.  He went to where they kept their father’s journal.  This wasn’t something that required the expertise of the Men of Letters.  This was just Dean, marveling at how—yet again—the universe was far as unconnected as it might otherwise appear.  Confirming what he suspected, he closed the leather-bound tome and ran his fingers through his hair.

Not sure what to do with the information he now possessed, he walked into the kitchen and grabbed a beer.  Hours passed, and with them, he consumed one bottle after the next.  When his stomach finally demanded something that at least mimicked sustenance, he relented and looked for something to quiet it.  He found a leftover piece of pie.  He just stood there, the door open as he stared at it.  He wasn’t sure how long he stared at it… long enough that he eventually no longer felt the chill of the refrigeration.

Sam appeared next to him and eased the handle from Dean’s hand.  Dean finally escaped his reverie.  He looked at his brother and opened his mouth.  No words came out.  Sam just smiled and nodded.  “Go,” he told him.

For whatever reason, Dean’s body might not have needed the permission, but it took it anyway.  He broke into a run towards his bedroom to change, leaving the taller Winchester to grab the piece of pie from where it sat on the plate before shoveling a bite into his mouth.  When Dean stormed off initially, Sam had done the same research.  He’d come to the same conclusions.  He’d even made a phone call to confirm his suspicions.  Satisfied with his findings, he scooped another forkful past his lips.  In no time, he’d finished it, down to the last crumb.  Rinsing the dish, he dried it, put it away, and turned off the light in the kitchen before heading to his own room.  He needed to check on the others.

He would talk with Dean later… whenever he came home.

Dean’s mind raced, almost as fast as he sped down the highway.  He couldn’t believe it all.  A part of him wondered if Chuck wasn’t screwing with him one last time.  The Winchesters could believe in all sorts of unimagined things, but coincidence wasn’t among them.  Conspiracy?  Sure.  That was a given.  The irony, though?  Dean didn’t care.  Not about any of it.  Not one single bit.

He only cared about one thing... getting to Mrs. Lucy’s.  When he reached the home, he found the door unlocked.  In the kitchen, the other man—baking—greeted him simply, “ _Winchester_.”

“ _Derek_.”


	8. Buttermilk

The pair just stood there, staring at one another in complete silence, though Derek continued baking.  Nothing about either’s posture was threatening, nor was either on the defensive, as if expecting an attack.  It wasn’t exactly sizing one another up, either.  It was scrutiny.  It was appraisal.  It was inaction borne of deciding what to say or do next.  Ultimately, it was Dean who made the first move.

“So, werewolf, huh?” he asked as though the question were some banal request for the time.

Derek nodded.  “Hunter?” he asked, though he clearly already knew the answer.

Dean returned the nod in affirmation, which put them right back at square one: awkward quietude.

This time, Derek was the first to crack.  “You here to kill me?” he asked.  He already suspected the answer, but it was something to shatter the tranquility.

“I think you already know,” Dean half-smiled.  “But if it makes you feel better to hear it, no.  In my younger days, I tended to shoot first and ask questions later, so fifteen—even ten—years ago, it would have been a different answer.”

Derek’s mouth upturned in the slightest hint of a smile.  “Glad I didn’t know you then.”

“Me, too,” the hunter replied truthfully.  “Cards on the table, are you going to try to kill me?”

Derek shook his head.  “I’ve killed exactly one person in my life, and I’ve carried that guilt and regret with me ever since.”

Dean might not have the benefit of supernatural senses to detect the tells of lying, but the honesty in the younger man’s words had a visible impact on him… a weight… a pain.  “You’re not one of those weird kinds that doesn’t experience their first change until they kill an innocent, are you?”

A curious eyebrow went up.  “I didn’t even know that was a thing,” Derek admitted.  “And I was born a werewolf.”

“Neither did I until a few years ago,” Dean confessed.  “Insomnia breeds me reading dusty old tomes in the middle of the night.  The Men of Letters have a very exhaust _ive_ collection of exhaust _ing_ lore on every supernatural creature imaginable.  Don’t tell my brother, though.  Pretty sure without being the nerd, Sam wouldn’t know how he fit in the family.”

“Your secret is safe,” Derek smiled.  After another hushed moment, his curiosity got the better of him.  “The Men of Letters?”

Dean nodded.  He didn’t know why he was being so frank and forthcoming with information that was supposed to be a secret.  “Mostly researchers and librarians who used to work in tandem with hunters decades ago, kind of like a CIA handler and field agent.  That’s the closest comparison that comes to mind, but I’ve been watching a lot of spy movies on Netflix lately, so I blame that.  They were pretty much wiped out in the States years ago, but most of their cataloguing efforts survived.”

“Sounds like a much grander version of my own family’s bestiary,” Derek told him.  “Though all of our knowledge was compiled from a few books onto a single flash drive.  Apparently, ours was obviously lacking, given that, like I said, I was born a werewolf, but I’ve never heard of this other type.”

“One of several other types, actually,” Dean remarked.  “You’re one of the purebloods.  I’ve met a few like you, at least somewhat, over the years in my travels.  The Duvals in Chicago come to mind.”

Derek shook his head.  “Don’t know them, but honestly?  It’s kind of racist to assume we all know one another.”

Dean cracked a smile.  “Was that a joke?”

“Maybe,” Derek shrugged, smiling himself.  “So, what do you know about us ‘purebloods’?”

“Depends,” Dean began.  “There’s multiple accounts there as well.  Mostly, it stems from whether or not you’re descended from the Alpha.”

Derek’s brow went up yet again.  “ _The_ Alpha?  You say that like there was only one.  My mother was an Alpha.”

Dean nodded.  “There’s one Alpha for each type of monster,” he began.

“So, I’m a monster?” Derek challenged accusingly.

The hunter didn’t take the bait.  “Pretty far from it, from where I’m standing.  There are definitely werewolves that came from the Alpha I’m describing, but where do werewolves come from, as far as you know?”

Derek shrugged.  “We were born this way.  Where we started is legend… myth.  Some say we’re from the line of Lycaon, after Zeus cursed him to become a ravening beast who devoured his own sons,” he deadpanned.  “If that’s true, it’s kind of a dick move.”

“That’s pretty much every god I’ve ever met,” Dean agreed.  The statement—and, undoubtedly, its veracity—caught Derek off-guard.  “There’ve been a few exceptions, but they’ve been few and far between.”

Derek studied the older man’s face.  “Why do I get the feeling there’s a story there?”

“There’s _lots_ of stories there.  Hit the library.  Look up a guy named Carver Edlund and check out everything he ever wrote.  That’ll catch you up on the first few years,” Dean smirked knowingly.  “After that, ignorance is probably bliss.”

The werewolf didn’t reply, but in the back of his mind, he filed away that bit of knowledge.  “So, did you come into the diner looking for me?”

Dean shook his head.  “I came in for the food.  I came back for the pie first, then the company.  I had no idea you were a werewolf until a few hours ago.  I thought those other werewolves came looking for me.  I thought I’d brought trouble to your doorstep.”

“I thought the same thing about myself,” Derek conceded.  “I didn’t know you were a hunter until you left the restaurant.  The way you faced those omegas… the way you handled yourself and that gun… you gave yourself away.  I just made a call to confirm my suspicions.”

This time, Dean’s eyebrow asked the question.  “Who’d you call?”

“Chris Argent,” Derek responded.  “Do you know him?”

“Honestly?  It’s kind of racist to assume we all know one another,” Dean grinned.

Derek smiled in return.  “Touché.”

Dean continued.  “I’ve never met Chris, but I knew of him.  Mostly, I knew of his family.  My Dad worked with them on one case back when I was a teenager.  Chris was away at the time, but his own father and a younger sister were around.”

“What do you know about them?” Derek asked, trying to stifle the bristling his body was doing involuntarily.

“The old man, Gerard, was a son of a bitch.  Scarier than half of the things I’ve hunted,” Dean revealed.  “The girl was just a kid at the time, but she was obviously a bit of a psycho, even then.  Good at hiding it, but you can’t con a con man.  I could smell the crazy… even then.”

Derek said nothing.  Dean knew why.  “It was her, wasn’t it?  _That_ Kate was the older woman who used you.” It wasn’t really a question.  He’d already put the pieces together.  With what Derek had told him only moments before, he had the entire picture.  “You killed Paige, and Kate used the grief to manipulate you.  She used you to get information about your family, and she used that information to kill them.”

“To _murder_ them,” Derek growled.  “You’re a lot quicker on the uptake than the investigators were back then.”

“The benefits of hindsight,” Dean confessed.  “Not to mention more than a bit of my own guilt.”

“ _Your_ guilt?” Derek asked uncertainly.  His eyebrow couldn’t even rise to the challenge, unable to put the pieces together on his end.

Dean nodded.  “My Dad called in the Argents as backup because they were the closest hunters available.  Several hours away close, that is.  They weren’t in Beacon Hills at the time.  My family may be the reason yours wound up on their radar.”

Dean must have expected Derek to fly off into a rage.  Instead, he just shook his head sympathetically, picking up on the chemo-signals of regret than emanated from the older man.  “The Argents had been in Beacon Hills before.  Gerard didn’t start a war between hunters and werewolves because of you.  He started one because his older brother was bitten before you were even born.  I appreciate the sentiment, but Gerard’s actions are on Gerard, not you… just like Kate’s are on Kate.  They’ve both been dead for years now… they killed one another.”

Dean exhaled a sigh of relief.  “I should probably feel bad that someone is dead, but I’ve been in this business far too long to think that it’s always a bad thing.  If _any_ thing, based on what happened to your family, ‘good riddance’ comes to mind.”

“I understand,” Derek told him.  “I was so consumed by my rage and self-destructive behavior for so long that it felt weird when I stopped hating them.  I didn’t forgive them, but I forgave myself, at which point they no longer mattered.”

“That’s very… _evolved_ ,” Dean offered, struggling to find the right word.  His choice, however, brought a smile to Derek’s lips.  “So, you going to bite me now?”

When Derek looked up sharply, glaring at the insinuation, he saw the mirth in Dean’s face.  “I should.  You deserve it.”

“I might like it,” Dean chuckled playfully.

“You might at that,” Derek smiled, surprising even himself at the ease of their banter.  “But I’m not an Alpha anymore.  It wouldn’t make you a Beta.  It would just make you hurt.”

The hunter was curious.  “You _were_ an Alpha?”

Derek nodded.  “I gave it up when I used that power to save my sister when she was dying.”

Dean wasn’t immediately able to respond to that.  He needed to see if the archives had more information about this type of werewolf, because if it didn’t, it needed to.  If it did, it needed to be updated with the tale of Derek Hale and his family.  “Did you ever bite anyone?”

Derek nodded again.  “Bit five, turned four.  The exception was Gerard.  It wasn’t by choice… long story.  I made four Betas.  Two were killed, but two are still around and doing well.  Isaac was in France last I knew for certain, but I think someone in the pack mentioned that he might be living in Florence, Italy, now.  Jackson is in London with his boyfriend, Ethan, though they might have gotten married by now, come to think of it.  They got engaged a while back.”

The open dialogue they were having set Dean completely at ease.  Derek trusted him with such vitally important information… about his Betas… about his pack.  He didn’t believe Dean would betray him, despite his history with hunters.  He was right.  Dean would protect them all.  A part of him demanded it.  “So how do you tell the difference between Alphas, Betas, and Omegas?” Dean asked, genuinely curious and desperate to focus on a subject change before he examined his feelings more closely.

Derek looked at Dean, willing his eyes to glow with their cerulean luminescence.  “An Alpha’s are red.  Betas and Omegas aren’t immediately distinguishable.  They’ll either be gold… or like mine.  Mine means that I have innocent blood on my hands.”

With the pained expression, Dean felt the need to reassure the werewolf.  “No judgment here.  I’ve killed more than my fair share… more than deserved it.  If Paige is the only one you carry with you, then you’re doing a damned sight better than me.  You might have the fangs and claws, but if anyone’s a monster here, it’s not you.”

The sincerity of the hunter’s words caught the werewolf off-guard.  He wanted to acknowledge what he’d said.  He wanted to thank him for it, but all he could muster was another nod, weaker than the last.  Weaker because Derek didn’t believe it.  There was nothing in the man standing before him that was monstrous.  Heat rising to his neck, the younger man shook it off.  “I still can’t believe that half a continent away, I’m talking to someone else who’s been to Beacon Hills,” he smirked innocuously.

Dean chuckled.  “I’ve been _to_ lots of places.  _Living_ someplace is the truly rare distinction, though we were there a while.  Long enough to make some friends.  Not long enough to regret leaving.”

Something he _didn’t_ say touched Derek’s hearing.  “When, exactly, were you there?”

“I checked my Dad’s journal.  It was twenty-five years ago.  I don’t think we met.  I didn’t exactly move in the same circles as werewolf pups,” Dean laughed.

Derek shook his head.  “If you hung around five-year-olds, we might need to have a different conversation.  I don’t, however, think you needed to check your Dad’s journal,” he told Dean knowingly.  “I did the math.  I can hear it— _smell_ it—when you talk about Beacon Hills.  You remember it well, and the math checks out.  You lost your virginity there, didn’t you?”

Dean rolled his eyes.  “Do we really have to talk about this?”

“Absolutely,” Derek chuckled.  “The big, bad hunter blushing about becoming a man makes him far less intimidating.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you’re intimidated in the slightest.  If anyone should be scared, it should be me.  After all, I’m talking to the big, bad wolf,” he mocked.  “You know?  The big, bad wolf with flour on his face, making him look more like the Pillsbury doughboy than something out of a horror movie.”

Abruptly, Derek stopped what he was doing, reaching up to wipe the flour away.  No sooner had he than he realized that he had, in fact, smeared flour on his cheek.  “Anyone ever tell you that you’re an ass?”

“Maybe,” Dean shrugged with a wry grin.  “Okay, all the time.”

Derek glowered at him.  “Argent told me I shouldn’t kill you.  I’m really questioning the quality of his advice right now.”

Dean beamed, proud of himself.  “Score one for the old boys’ network, then.  I’m a big fan of not being dead.  Been there, done that—way too many times to count.  I haven’t enjoyed any of them.”

No blips.  No upticks.  The werewolf knew the hunter was telling the truth.  “Sounds like another long story.”

“Lots of them,” Dean conceded, repeating his words from earlier.  “Start with the _Supernatural_ books, then we’ll talk about it.  You need the background frame of reference for context.  You need to work your way up to hearing about the Devil, God, and his sister.”

Derek started to open his mouth, but he thought better of it.  That Dean had rendered him speechless made the hunter smile.  “So, what are we making, anyway?”

“Buttermilk pie,” the werewolf answered.  “Easy to make, but more importantly, I had all the ingredients on hand.  I didn’t want to be at the store if you came back.”

Dean met Derek’s gaze.  “Did you _expect_ me to come?”

Derek didn’t flinch.  A gentle smile danced across his lips.  “I think _hoped_ is probably a better word.”

Dean just stared, his brain trying to play catch up as it processed everything that was just said.  Finally, he smiled, stepping forward to the counter.  “So, how can I help?”

 

Derek was right, Dean mused.  The buttermilk pies were easier—and quicker—to make than the previous day’s efforts.  They were finished with much more time to spare, so by the time they got to Jimbo’s, Derek didn’t have to immediately take over on the grill.  Instead, he grabbed a couple of mugs, filled them with coffee, and sat in one of the booths.  Dean slid into the seat across from him.

“So, I have a question,” Dean began, taking a sip.  “What was up with the phone call you got yesterday?  If you don’t mind me asking, that is.”

Derek inhaled deeply.  “A friend.  A pain in the ass, but still a friend.  He tracked me down, against my wishes, putting everyone I care about at risk.”

With that statement, the hunter was mentally slapping his forehead.  In all their discussions about what had brought them to that point, they’d neglected a rather important detail.  They’d made pies, but they’d skipped over what, precisely, brought a werewolf to the middle of nowhere, slinging hash in a diner.  “I feel stupid for not asking this before, but why _are_ you on the run?”

Dean was relieved to see a similar “a-ha” moment on said werewolf’s face.  Derek hadn’t realized it either, at least until this very moment.  “A number of months back,” he began, “I got a call from an old family friend from another pack.  Someone was hunting our kind.  Impossibly strong, unable to be killed, he said he needed soldiers for the coming war.  Some joined him willingly.  Those that didn’t?  He reduced them to ash.”

Dean didn’t like where this was going.  He didn’t like it one bit.  “Why you?  You said someone called you, specifically.  Sounds like a warning.”

Derek nodded.  “The guy was looking for someone specific, someone to turn into the perfect weapon or soldier or whatever.  I have an ability that’s rare for us, and he wanted either me or something called a True Alpha.  I have a friend who’s a True Alpha—more a brother, really.  When we realized the targets on our backs, Scott and I split up.  We disappeared and got as far away from our friends, family, and pack as we could before whatever this thing was could find us and could turn us into… what was the word they said he used?”

As Derek interrupted his tale to finish his thought, Dean’s blood ran cold.  He knew the word.  “Vessel.”

Derek stopped, staring at Dean incredulously.  “I should have known you and your Men of Letters library might have a clue what he is.  Any clue how to stop him?”

The hunter marveled, yet again, and how intertwined destiny was for the Winchesters.  Even now, this werewolf with no previous connection to or contact with him had been dragged into the middle of a problem of Dean’s making.  “His name is Michael.  He’s an archangel,” he explained.  “He’s not a threat now.  You’re safe from him.”

“ _Archangel?_ ” Derek repeated, not believing his own ears.

Dean nodded.  “Technically, he was the Michael from another dimension.  The Michael from this world was cast into the cage with Lucifer after using my brother as his vessel.” When Derek opened his mouth to ask a follow-up, Dean elaborated.  “Not Sam.  My half-brother, Adam.”

The answer didn’t exactly _satisfy_ Derek’s curiosity, but as one true statement followed the next, he was at a loss as to what question to even start with.  He was particularly stymied when Dean added, “Sam was Lucifer’s vessel.”

Derek stared at him blankly.  “I think I’m going to need a drink… and a flowchart.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Dean smiled.  “It involves my mother, a yellow-eyed demon, time travel, and generations of manipulating fate to turn my brother and I into the perfect embodiments of God’s warring sons.”

Derek shook his head, confused beyond measure.  “I really wish you were kidding… lying… something.”

Dean could get on board with that statement.  “I wish that, too,” he agreed.  “Living it sucked far worse than the Cliffs Notes.  The one _good_ thing out of my unique perspective on all of this?  I get to tell you that Michael is out of the picture.  He won’t be coming looking for you, your friend Scott, or anyone else.”

Derek contemplated the ramifications of that bit of information wordlessly.  He was paralyzed into inaction as he let the gravity of it truly sink in.  After several moments, he stopped staring off into space blankly and locked his eyes with Dean’s.  “You mean I can go home?”

“You can go home,” Dean smiled.  It was something of a relief to be able to extract even the tiniest morsel of good news from that terrible period.  He could see the tension drain from Derek’s shoulders, like the werewolf was breathing for the first time in forever.  “So, are you going to head back to California?”

Derek sort of half-shrugged.  “I don’t know, honestly,” he admitted.  “Beacon Hills _is_ home, but I haven’t lived there in years.  Then again, I haven’t really lived anywhere since, either.  I just sort of moved from place to place.  Nowhere until here, that is.”

Dean nodded in understanding.  “Looking for something and haven’t found it yet?” he asked.

“Yes and no,” the younger man tried to explain.  “With pack, you literally carry them with you.  I can feel Jackson.  I can feel Isaac.  I’m not an Alpha anymore, much less theirs, but that connection remains.  Scott was bitten by my uncle.  We were briefly his Betas together, and we’re forever bound because of it.  As a former Alpha myself, I learned to reach out through that tether, but It’s not exactly a homing beacon.  I can’t use it to find him, but I know he’s okay.”

Realizing he was off-track, Derek offered an apologetic smile.  “I’m not looking for a sense of self, or family, or home, because I have all of those things.  I have them inside me, no matter where I go.  But I also feel like I’ve found those things twice-over, with everyone here.”

“I get that,” Dean assured him.  “Probably more than you realize.  When Sam and I got our Mom back from that other world I told you about?  We brought back others with us.  Here?  Some have become hunters.  Some have moved out to start an attempt at a normal life.  Some still live at the bunker with us.  All are just trying to adjust.  I’ve got a larger family—a larger _pack_ —than I’ve ever had or even dreamed of.  Yet, I find myself wanting more.”

Derek listened intently, and after a moment, he nodded.  “I guess we have more in common than either of us realized.  What I just realized, though, is that it’s time for my shift,” he smiled, standing.  “Are you heading home, or are you going to stick around?”

“I got nowhere pressing to be,” Dean smiled back.

Derek started for the kitchen when he heard Irene tell George.  “They really do make a cute couple,” the elderly woman told her husband.  The werewolf paused for a half-second mid-stride—just long enough for his cheeks to burn crimson—when he realized she was talking about him and Dean.

 

It was a while later when Dean was startled by Ashley pouring him a cup of coffee.  “You look like you needed it,” she smiled when his eyes met hers.  He hadn’t realized he had drifted off to sleep until this very moment.  Rubbing his eyes, he looked around to get his bearings.  He wondered how long he had been out.  She shook her head, sensing the unspoken question.  “Two rushes and about a hundred silverware packs, or in layman’s terms, just over five hours.”

 _Five hours?_   He had no idea his body was that exhausted.  He glanced back at the kitchen to see Derek at the grill, as usual.  He was working on several orders at once, but for the first time, he looked like he was about to drop.  He was as exhausted as Dean had been.  Maybe ten years of youth and supernatural metabolism were quite as forgiving as the hunter had originally thought.  “Thanks,” he told her, sipping the coffee.

“Anytime,” she assured him, moving on to check on the other tables.  He watched Derek silently, and when the werewolf eventually caught his gaze, both smiled briefly before awkwardly turning away.  Dean felt guilty.  Derek had left the only home he had known and was conflicted about returning to it.  Why was Dean so happy for the other man’s misery?

Burning with shame, Dean shook it off and walked into the kitchen.  He leaned against the counter.  “Sorry I can’t help you out the way I did with Ashley.  Somehow, I think inexperienced line cook wouldn’t be nearly as forgiving as inexperienced food server,” he chuckled.  “You look like I felt before I apparently passed out.”

“At least you didn’t drool on anybody this time,” Derek grinned.  “Sorry, but I know the difference in my scent and yours, so your cover story didn’t do the trick.  Besides, I’m fine.”

Dean’s cheeks were on fire.  “Okay, good to know.  I can’t lie to you.”  That bit of knowledge was equally refreshing—because he had to be upfront with someone—and terrifying… because he had to be upfront with someone.

Derek shrugged.  “Scents aren’t like words.  It’s harder to hide them, though some among us have learned to do it.  When someone’s hiding something they’re saying though, be it deliberate or otherwise, it’s like a veil you can’t quite see through.  You’ve chosen your words carefully at times, but for the most part, you’ve been an open book.  It’s been… nice.”

This time, it was Derek’s turn for his face to flush crimson.  Dean couldn’t help but smile.  “And you’ve told me about you and your pack, even knowing what I am.  Given your history with hunters, I know that can’t have been easy.  Lying is a part of my life, but I haven’t felt the need to do that with you.”

“Oh, after Kate, I learned how adept a hunter can be at lying all-too-well,” Derek reminded Dean, “but I’m not a sixteen-year-old kid blinded by teenaged hormones anymore.  I trust my instincts.”

“Something we have in common,” Dean agreed, “but you still look like you’re going to face-plant onto that flat-top at any moment.  Anything I can do?”

Derek appreciated the gesture, but he shook his head.  “Actually, if you’re good on rest, you can stand there and keep talking to me.  Maybe if my brain’s moving, I can keep my body doing the same.”

“Your body’s doing just fine,” Dean assured him, instantly regretting his words as though he’d just swallowed his foot.  “What I mean to say is that your shift is almost over.  After that, you can go home and get some rest.”

The younger man yawned as he shook his head.  “I can’t.  I have pies to make, remember?” he grinned, not commenting on the inadvertent compliment that the older man’s words didn’t mean.  “I may need to grab ten minutes or so before I get on the road back to the house.”

Dean thought about it for a moment.  “First of all, ten minutes isn’t going to help.  Secondly, you’re in no shape to be behind the wheel,” he pointed out, instantly regretting his choice of words as his mind was suddenly far too cognizant of exactly what shape the werewolf was in.  “Finally, I told you I would help.”

The werewolf smiled.  “Okay then, Mr. Helper, what do you suggest?”

The hunter smiled back.  He had come up with an answer before he opened his mouth.  “You’re coming back to the bunker with me.”

“And that ‘helps’ how?” Derek asked incredulously, his eyebrow cocked.  “I— _we_ —still have a ton of pies to make for tomorrow.”

“For starters, there’s beds aplenty, so you can get some rest.  Hell, you can sleep in mine, if you want,” he offered, mentally kicking himself for the added and accidental insinuations.  Ignoring it lest he make the situation worse, he continued.  “We have a kitchen that’s way bigger than Mrs. Lucy’s.  Though normally I would say it’s empty, that’s just prepared food, since I don’t cook.  From this new vantage point, though, I can tell you that it’s fully stocked with everything we would need to cook half of any pie you want to make.”

Derek stared at him.  “And how does that help the pies get made if I’m sleeping?” He wasn’t trying to sound sarcastic and snippy, but tired plus confused made for a cranky sourwolf.

“Because you can rest, and I can call in the reinforcements.  Sam and some of the others are there.  My brother’s a brain trust.  He can figure out the recipes.  You have the cookbook right there,” he pointed out while pointing to the weathered volume on the counter.  He had seen Derek grab it when they grabbed the pies, knowing the other man was planning on looking through it during a lull to pick out tomorrow’s fare.  “You’re not going to be any good to Mrs. Lucy or anyone else if you don’t take care of yourself.  Trust me, I’m familiar with the dilemma.  It’s usually Sam’s job to remind me of that.  You don’t have a Sam, and neither Scott or the guy on the phone yesterday is here to do it, so that means it falls to me.”

Derek contemplated what Dean said.  It made sense, and after a moment of consideration, he nodded.  “Stiles,” he said.  Seeing the lack of connection in the hunter’s mind, he filled in the blanks.  “The aforementioned pain in the ass friend that called me yesterday.  He’s something of a Jiminy Cricket for the pack, even if annoying as Hell in that capacity.”

Dean smiled.  His relationship with his brother gave him complete understanding of that dynamic.  “I’m familiar with the concept.  Mine is the one that hacked your call logs and found the mouthful of a name that I can only assume was shortened to Stiles to prevent charges of child abuse,” he grinned.

Derek was briefly bothered that Sam had invaded his privacy, but he realized that the younger Winchester was just looking out for his brother.  That there wasn’t an army of hunters here pumping rounds into him suggested that the giant was likely as understanding as Dean.  “Yeah.  That would be him,” Derek conceded.  “He might be FBI now, but he liked playing Big Brother for the pack even in high school.  Always thought he was smarter than everyone else.”

“Sounds annoying,” Dean smiled.

Derek shook his head.  “You have _no_ idea.  Worst part?  He usually was.”

“Sounds familiar.”

“Okay,” Derek agreed.  “I’ll finish up here, then we’ll go.  I need to call Stiles anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The whole "revealed enemies" thing has been done to the point that it's a trope. It's certainly been done by far more skilled authors than myself, so I opted for a different tact. No antagonism or hostility, since I didn't really want that sort of feel in this story. The pacing is a little faster than your typical reveal, because I didn't want to drag that out needlessly. I wanted to focus on the crux of this story. I hope you enjoyed this chapter. It was difficult to get right for me, but I *think* I'm happy with how it turned out.


	9. Peach

Dean looked over into his passenger seat and smiled.  For someone who a half-hour ago swore he was fine and that he didn’t need sleep, Derek had been out cold for at least the last twenty minutes.  As the virtually empty highway stretched out before them, the hunter kept stealing glances at the werewolf.  He’d seen the other man with his eyes shut before, but for only a few moments.  It was a perplexing dichotomy when compared to the aura Derek exuded otherwise.

Derek came across as surly and tough, but when he smiled, he seemed like the guy that the most paranoid of mothers would willingly leave their child with.   The imperfect mouth full of teeth seemed situated in that mouth perfectly, and like Dean, a hardened past could be overcome—for at least a moment—to reveal the man he might have otherwise been had he not been shaped and scarred by tragedy.

Dean idly wondered why he was thinking about Derek’s smile… his mouth… his teeth… and whether he was good with kids.  He quickly pushed those thoughts out of his head, writing them off as an idle internal monologue to pass the time.  He knew Garth and that pack, so he’d encountered werewolves who were in control (at least usually), but the degree of restraint Derek possessed and the specifics of his inborn nature piqued the hunter’s interests.  Everything about Derek intrigued him, the more he thought about it.

Why didn’t Derek snore?  He seemed like someone who would snore, but he was so quiet when he slept that Dean was half-tempted to check to see if he was still breathing.  For someone who seemed physically imposing, the way he curled up against the car door made him seem small.  For someone Dean would have once considered a monster—a killer—there was a gentleness and innocence there.  It was _that_ nature that Kate had taken advantage of and very nearly destroyed.  A part of Dean was glad she was dead already, because if she weren’t, he might change that.

Dean wondered about what the ability was that Derek possessed that Michael wanted.  He also wondered about the nature of the Alphas Derek spoke of, particularly what a True Alpha was.  It had to make this Scott guy pretty impressive as well, and that, like Derek, he’d scattered to the wind to protect those close to him spoke volumes about him… also like Derek.  He wondered if Scott would captivate him so fully.  Professional curiosity about these shapeshifters was what Dean attributed it to, but a part of him knew that Derek the man—without the fangs and claws—was a mystery as well.  It was a mystery that he wanted to solve.

The hunter realized that he was staring at Derek a little _too_ much.  Particularly when the next ninety minutes passed in the blink of an eye.  Derek hadn’t moved, much less stirred.  He just sat there, still and content.  When Dean felt the urge to reach out and brush an errant bit of hair from the other man’s face, he was glad that he’d turned off the road towards the bunker.  It wasn’t long before he was pulling into the garage.  “We’re here,” he announced.

The driver door opened with its all-too-familiar creak, a groan of protest that Dean deliberately left in place because it reminded him of when his Dad drove Baby.  As he began to climb out of the vehicle, he realized Derek was still sound asleep.  Reaching over, he tried to shake him awake.  On some unconscious level, the paranoid and mistrustful side of his brain half expected Derek to come alive with a start and show his feral side.  Instead, Derek glanced over at him.  “Sorry,” he smiled, and Dean, once again, really liked that smile.  “Guess I was more tired than I thought.”

As both men stood to their full height, Derek stretched with a yawn, causing his shirt to ride up enough to show the sculpted abdominals beneath.  “No problem,” Dean assured him, quickly averting his eyes.  “I’m just glad I didn’t have to carry you in.  You’re not as big as Sam when I used to have to drag him along after a bender, but I’m also not a young man anymore.  They tend to frown on chasing aspirin with whiskey, so I’d just as soon stick with the latter without the former.”

Derek chuckled, following the elder man inside.  “You’re not that old by any means,” he assured the hunter.  “We age differently… slower.  Because of that, those around us tend to show the signs of aging, but as a byproduct, we tend to ignore the tells, especially in those we care about.  Turning a blind eye, eye of the beholder, or whatever you want to call it.  I wouldn’t have thought you were more than a year or two older than me.”

Why did Dean’s heart swell when Derek talked about those he cared about?  What the Hell did that have to do with anything?  Pushing it aside, he deflected.  “Almost a decade, and that’s a long time in human years.”

“Human years?” Derek smirked, trying not to laugh.  “Do you think we measure things in dog years?”

Realizing he had misspoken, Dean tried desperately to salvage his next words from lingering embarrassment.  He was gratefully saved when he walked in to find Sam nursing a cup of coffee in one hand and an old book in the other.  “Morning,” the younger Winchester greeted them, his expression carefully neutral.  Setting the voluminous tome aside, he dusted off his palm before extending his hand.  “Nice to meet you officially, Derek Hale.”

Dean smiled.  It wasn’t a stretch to assume that Sam had followed the exact train of information that he had to uncover Derek’s real identity.  Hell, he’d probably just used Dean’s search history.  He made a mental note to start hitting more porn sites to make sure his brother didn’t get too comfortable with following in those particular tracks.

Derek hesitated only a moment, seeing the lack of concern in the elder hunter’s face.  Taking the hand, he shook it with his own smile.  “You, too, Sam Winchester.”

The three men sat there in an awkward silence before it bothered Dean enough to break it.  “So, what are you working on?” he asked, pointing to the book.

“I’m not sure yet,” Sam admitted.  “I’ll let you know when I have something.  So, what are you guys up to?”

“Sleep,” Dean offered, proffering the cookbook.  “He and I have both been pushing our bodies to the max, and we could both use some actual rest.  The catch?  We need to make pies for the diner.  I was hoping you might be willing to help.”

Sam raised an eyebrow.  His brother was asking him for a favor, which he rarely did, so Sam nodded without thinking.  “I’m no baker, but I think a couple of the others might be able to help me out,” he told his older sibling, taking the book of recipes while closing the one with more esoteric lore.  “I’ll handle it.  You guys go.”

Dean didn’t have to be told twice.  He motioned for Derek to follow him, leading him down the most isolated hallway towards his bedroom.  The werewolf’s eyes furtively moved up and down every inch of the building as they continued.  He was clearly impressed, but he said nothing.  “Sam and I were the first ones to move in, so we picked the ones with the most comfortable bunks.  Not that there’s a huge degree of difference from the least comfortable ones,” he admitted.  “As we’ve taken in strays, as it were, we’ve kept them in other parts of the bunker to give us at least the illusion of privacy.”

“Here we are,” he announced.  “This is the bathroom I use.  Towels and washcloths are next to the sink.  Basic soap and shampoo are in the shower.  If you want some of the fancy frou-frou stuff, I’m sure Sam has something.”

Derek chuckled.  “Whatever’s in there is fine,” he told Dean.  He was tempted to say he wasn’t picky, but in his own way, he was.  It was that he didn’t mind smelling like Dean.  He liked the hunter’s scent.  “What about you?”

“Is that an invitation to join you?” Dean teased, and the flash of crimson on the werewolf’s face made him smile.  He still couldn’t believe he was so casual with the wordplay with the younger man.  Amused, he shook his head.  “I’m going to get Sam started.  Just yell if you need something.”

 

When Dean reached the kitchen, Sam was slicing peaches.  “Hey,’ the elder Winchester greeted his brother.  Sam looked up for a moment and smiled before looking back down at the cookbook.  “Hey.  You get Derek settled in okay?”

“Yeah.  He’s grabbing a shower now,” Dean nodded, wondering why “settled in” made it sound like the other man was moving in on a permanent basis.

Sam nodded in return.  “Feel free to grab some of my clothes for him if you want.  I don’t know if yours will fit him.”

“Thanks,” Dean replied, not really sure how the innocuous exchange felt so awkward.  Finally, he spoke up.  “Are you okay with him being here?”

Sam stopped what he was doing, placing the peach and the knife on the counter.  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Dean wasn’t really sure how to answer that, so he considered and chose his words carefully before trying to explain.  “You and I are kind of joined at the hip.  The last time I spent a lot of time with someone _other_ than you was Benny.  That didn’t turn out so well, not to mention it didn’t exactly sit right with you.  You thought I was replacing you or something.”

The younger Winchester stared at his brother for a moment before smiling.  “And the fact that you asked that is why I’m okay with it.  You’re not the same guy you were then.  I’m certainly not.  And Derek?  I like Derek… even if he has a mean right-hook.”

Dean laughed at that.  When the room grew quiet, Sam had a question of his own.  “Is that the only reason you’re worried about how I feel about Derek?”

The elder Winchester grew uncomfortable, and he couldn’t quite explain why… even to himself.  “Yeah,” he stammered.  “What are you asking?”

Sam shrugged, picking up the knife and peach again, beginning to peel the fruit.  “Nothing.”

Dean could read between the silence, especially where his brother was concerned.  He knew his brother wasn’t saying something… he just wasn’t entirely sure what.  “Is this about him being a werewolf?”

“What?  No!” The question caught Sam so off-guard that he nearly cut into his own flesh.  Stopping, he put both peach and knife down on the cutting board.  “Why would you even ask that?”

The elder Winchester hesitated to respond.  “Well…,” he began.  His hem hawing didn’t go unnoticed, and the younger just stared at him patiently.  He didn’t know how to ask what he wanted to ask.  “We haven’t exactly had the best track record when it comes to werewolves.”

A light of realization appeared in Sam’s eyes.  “Are you talking about Madison?” he asked.

After a moment, Dean nodded.  “Yeah,” he admitted.  “I guess I am.”

If the pained look wasn’t so evident on his brother’s face, Sam might have even laughed.  The question seemed almost out of the blue, especially after all that had happened to the two of them since that moment more than a decade ago.  “Of course not,” he assured him.  “That was a thousand lifetimes ago.  We’re not the hunters we were then.  Hell, we’re not even the people we were then.”

“We’ve learned so much about werewolves since then.  The Duvals in Chicago… Garth and his pack… now Derek and his,” Sam continued.  “She wasn’t like them, and whether or not she could have been is water under the bridge.  If there was any helping her then, we didn’t know how, and we didn’t know anyone who did.  Do I wish things could have turned out differently for her?  Of course.  Do I blame myself?  No, not anymore… and I certainly don’t blame you.”

Dean exhaled the breath he didn’t realize he was holding.  Then again, he wasn’t consciously aware of how much guilt he harbored for what his brother had gone through with people like Madison and Amy.  An older, wiser Winchester regretted the things that his younger self never even contemplated, especially when it came to Sam.

“I just… feel bad, I guess,” the elder brother offered.  “We had a pretty crappy track record back in the day with ‘monsters’, especially ones you liked.  Now, I’ve gone and invited a werewolf into our home.”

Sam smiled.  He doubted Dean caught the connection that he’d likely inadvertently made.  It made it sound an awful lot like he liked Derek.  It was a pretty telling statement, especially given that in that context, no mention was made of angels, demons, witches, Nephilim, or anything else.  Dean hadn’t asked about having ‘monsters’ as a part of their lives… he’d asked about a werewolf.  Specifically, one.  “I told you, man.  That’s the past,” the younger hunter assured him.  “Now, go get some sleep so I can get these pies done.”

Dean caught his brother’s knowing look, but he didn’t know _what_ Sam knew.  He was just grateful that his brother seemed utterly at peace with that little bit of bad blood.  As the tension drained from his shoulders, Sam’s words had a cathartic effect on his body.  They gave Dean permission to be exhausted, and right now, he wanted sleep.  He nodded.  “Thanks, Sammy.”

 

When Dean made it back to his room, the door to the shower was open.  Derek was standing there, with a towel around his waist—and nothing else—as he shaved.  Once again, the hunter stared at the tattoo between the werewolf’s shoulder blades.  This time, though, the younger man noticed.

“It’s like a family crest,” Derek explained, wiping his face with a towel.  “At its most literal, it represents Alpha, Beta, and Omega.  It’s a reminder that each can rise to one and fall to the other.  It’s something of a mantra—a focus—to help us concentrate on when we need help with control.”

Dean smiled, pulling down his collar to reveal the anti-possession sigil that was tattooed over his collarbone.  “Something of a family crest for Sammy and me.  Means don’t let a demon wear your meat-suit.  Good advice, by the way.  It was a lesson both of us learned the hard way.”

Derek smiled back.  “I’ll keep that in mind.  Should we go help him with the pies?”

“No,” Dean told him, shaking his head.  “If my brother says he has it under control, he does.  Besides, he’s right—though he usually is.  We could both use the rest.”

Derek was silent for a moment, obviously deliberating.  Dean could practically hear the gears grinding in the werewolf’s head.  “I can’t say that even a few hours off sounds like a bad thing.  Ever since Miss Lucy went in the hospital, it hasn’t felt like there’s been a break.”

“I’m going to grab a shower myself, then,” Dean nodded in understanding.  “Sammy said you could bother some of his clothes.  Nothing fancy, but they’re clean and don’t smell like diner food… no offense.”

Derek chuckled.  “None taken.  Which one is his room?” he asked for confirmation.

Dean pointed the way, watching the younger man head in that direction for a moment before shaking his head.  He was thinking, _“What the Hell is wrong with me?”_ He knew better than to give voice to the thought, though.  He was acutely aware of just how good the werewolf’s hearing was.

Deciding that a shower was, indeed, just what he needed to clear his mind, he shut the door behind him.  Once under the just-above-lukewarm spray, he tried to thing about anything and everything that wasn’t Derek Hale.

 

While Dean showered, Derek rummaged through to find something to wear from Sam’s things.  Normally, Derek’s build made it somewhat challenging coming up with something that fit.  Hardly the case with the younger Winchester, who easily stood 6’5” barefoot.  Coming up with some that wasn’t flannel or a button-down?  That was another matter entirely.  Able to fully shift, Derek opted for clothes that were quick to get out of—which a button-down certainly qualified—but he needed to be able to put them on equally quickly and tearing the shirt open would render its buttons useless.

Finally, he settled on a Henley that was a little baggy on him, but it was comfortable enough.  It was obviously well-worn and frequently washed, so much so that Sam’s scent lingered in it even more than the laundry detergent.  Not in a bad way, but it was still unfamiliar.  Ever since he evolved, he found his lupine instincts far more aggressive in nagging at his thoughts.  It was those very thoughts that tugged at his discomfort of being in strange surroundings with strange scents. 

Derek didn’t even realize he had wandered back into Dean’s room until he was sitting on the older man’s bed.  For whatever reason the elder hunter’s scent calmed him.  He planned on just being there for a moment… just long enough to settle himself.  What he hadn’t anticipated was exhaustion setting in.  Supernatural endurance had its limitations and sleep eventually won out….

When Dean walked out of the bathroom, still damp with hair matted to his head and a towel wrapped around his waist, he saw Derek lying on his bed.  A smile upturned the corner of his mouth, and he didn’t really think about what to do next.  He really didn’t think at all.  Instead, he walked to his dresser, and as quietly as he could manage, he got dressed before gently lying down on the mattress next to the werewolf.  In no time, he was fast asleep himself.

 

When Derek awoke some time later, he felt more rested than he had in… well, he couldn’t remember when.  He was content, and a part of him was certain that it was in no small part due to the man lying next to him.  Dean was fast asleep.  The cadence of his breathing and steady heartbeat told him as much.  The hunter, too, was resting peacefully, and the strangely soft lashes fluttered ever-so-slightly, betraying a dream.  As there was no quickening of the pulse or jerky movements, it seemed like a good one, so Derek opted to let the other man sleep.

Rising quietly as not to wake him, the werewolf decided to make his way back to the kitchen.  Clad in his own jeans, he borrowed an exceedingly old sweatshirt of Sam’s.  Derek thought he could make out the faded tree emblem of Stanford University, and the somewhat tight fit of it suggested that the younger Winchester was once smaller in stature—if not height—than he was now.

When he reached the kitchen, he found Sam there—as expected—along with a handful of other people.  “You’re up,” the towering brother smiled from where he stood by the ovens, peering inside.  The werewolf felt the scrutiny of the strangers staring at him.

Derek felt his isolationist tendencies creeping back into his darkest recesses of his mind.  He didn’t speak, simply nodded.  Fighting his nature, he forced himself to speak in an effort to break the silence.  “Yeah.  I was more tired than I realized.  Dean’s still passed out,” he added awkwardly, pointing backwards down the hall, as though the assemblage didn’t know where the hunter would be.  Tugged at the sweatshirt, an outward manifestation of his discomfort.  “I hope this is alright.”

“It’s fine,” Sam assured him.  “Let me introduce you to everyone.  Derek Hale, this is my mother, Mary Winchester.”

The blond woman gave Derek a look that made his blood run cold.  There was something quietly intimidating about her in a way that was usually reserved for Derek himself.  She was slicing peaches, and as he stared down to the fruit in her hands, he cocked an eyebrow involuntarily.  “I’m guessing my son—the other one, that is—has told you about my cooking prowess… or lack thereof,” she deadpanned.  “Relax, I’m just slicing peaches.  Handling a knife?  I can do.”

Of that, there was little doubt.  There was a cold precision in her hands that marked as a hunter, and a dangerous one at that.  The way she looked at Sam was motherly, at least somewhat, but whatever else she had been virtually robbed from her.  A hardness was the bulk of what remained.  In her, Derek could see something that reminded him of Kate, Gerard, and Victoria, even momentary glimpses in Chris and Allison.  It was something he didn’t see in Dean and Sam, which made him let down the guard that was now very much back up.

Sensing the tension, Sam tugged her attentions back to him.  “Bobby back, too?” he asked.

She shook her head.  “He and Castiel are checking into a possible ghoul infestation outside of Waco.”

Then the awkward silence returned.  Sam picked up on it, once again.  Changing the topic of conversation back to introductions, he continued.  “This is Jack,” he told the werewolf.  The young man was simply staring at Derek, but whereas Mary seemed to regard him as a threat, Jack was all smiles… literally.  He was smiling at Derek like some sort of optimistic puppy awaiting a treat or a scratch behind the ears.

Derek couldn’t quite figure out which one unnerved him more.  “Hello,” Jack greeted with an unsurprising smile.

Derek gave a perfunctory node and a wave.  “Nice to meet you,” he ultimately managed.  The return seemed to satisfy Jack, who went back to reading Mrs. Lucy’s recipes.

“And this is Jessie and her fiancé, John,” Sam finished, naming off the remaining couple.  The pair were deftly making a half-dozen pies at once.  “They just got back a few days ago.  They both have a knack for cooking and volunteered to help.”

There was a sense—and scent—of sadness and grief that became instantly cloying and overwhelming.  Derek didn’t know the full story, but it was an echo of what he got from Dean whenever Michael had been mentioned.  There was pain there, but it wasn’t his place to mention it.  Instead, he redirected the subject himself.  “Thank you.  Thank you, all.  I know Mrs. Lucy appreciates it.”

Walking over to Sam, he reached for some dough, but Sam pulled it away.  “You do enough cooking.  Dean told me what you’ve been doing for Mrs. Lucy and the others.  You deserve some time off.  Just relax and leave this to us for the time being.”

Unsure of what to say or do next, he just nodded.  “Thank you,” he repeated himself.  Awkward silence, take… thirty-seven?  He wasn’t comfortable letting these people do for him, but wasn’t that was he was doing for the others back at the diner?

“Go.  Relax,” Sam told him.

Derek numbly obeyed, and even with heightened hearing, he was well out of earshot when Jack said, “I like him.”

Sam grinned.  “Me, too.”

“Dean likes him?” Jack asked innocently.  “Like _likes_ likes him?”

“I think so,” Sam replied.  Mary answered at the exact same moment.  “Yes, he does.”

Mother and son looked at one another.  After a moment, smiles were exchanged, and both went back to what they were doing.  Jack, on the other hand, seemed pensive.  “Does Dean know he likes him?” the Nephilim asked.

“Nope,” the Winchesters echoed in unison.  They looked at one another again.  Mary shrugged.  “He’s as oblivious as his father was back in the day.  Glad one of my boys got my sense.”

Jack seemed content with that.  He smiled before glancing back down at the recipe.  “I like making pies.”


End file.
